"Omniscience" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... these ideas of the more concrete religious objects, religion is full of abstract objects which prove to have an equal power. God's attributes as such, his holiness, his justice, his mercy, his absoluteness, his infinity, his omniscience, his tri-unity, the various mysteries of the redemptive process, the operation of the sacraments, etc., have proved fertile wells of inspiring meditation for Christian believers.[21] We shall see later that the absence of definite sensible images is positively insisted on by the mystical ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... make it of nothing, what did he make it of? Where there was, nothing, He made something. Yes; out of what? I don't know. This doctor of divinity, and I should think such a divinity would need a doctor, says that God made the universe out of His omnipotence. Why not out of His omniscience, or His omnipresence? Omnipotence is not a raw material. It is the something to work raw material with. Omnipotence is simply all powerful, and what good would strength do with nothing? The weakest man ever born could lift as much nothing as God. And he could do as much ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll
... the time; and that Faraday's clumsy mechanical refutation of table-turning had not been considered so conclusive. For there really are "more things in heaven and earth, Horatio," &c., than even your omniscience is aware of; and without pinning faith on Madame Blavatsky, or Mr. Hume, or any other wonder-worker from America or Thibet, there doubtless are petty miracles in what is called spiritualism (possibly some form ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... her question in these terms: "This honest world will forgive a young gamester for indiscretion at play, but a favour granted to a babbling coxcomb is an unpardonable offence." This response she received with equal astonishment and chagrin; and, fully convinced of the necromancer's omniscience, implored his advice, touching the retrieval of her reputation: upon which he counselled her to wed with the first opportunity. She seemed so well pleased with his admonition, that she gratified him with a double fee, and, ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... and some arrogance on the difference between foreknowledge and foreordination. He rejects predestination decisively, but he not only does not answer, he does not even so much as mention, the difficulty that arises in attempting to distinguish between what is foreordained by Omniscience and what is foreknown by Omnipotence. Pope compared some of the speeches delivered in Heaven to the arguments of a "School-divine." The comparison does injustice to the scholastic philosophers. There ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh
... the being of GOD, I mean, considered apart from His nature and attributes. Yet we cannot form any intelligent conception of these realities. We cannot shape to our apprehension the faintest rational conception of the Personality of GOD, of His Omniscience, of His Omnipresence. Yet we are able, and indeed are forced to believe, as Christians, in these attributes of His Nature, although ...
— The Life of the Waiting Soul - in the Intermediate State • R. E. Sanderson
... herself; just a hopeful, loving woman: a little better educated than the majority, having had greater opportunity: a little further seeing, maybe, having had more leisure for thought: but otherwise, no whit superior to any other young, eager woman of the people. This absurd journalistic pose of omniscience, of infallibility—this non-existent garment of supreme wisdom that, like the King's clothes in the fairy story, was donned to hide his nakedness by every strutting nonentity of Fleet Street! She would have no use for it. It should be a friend, ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome
... unwelcome thought to a great many men, and it will be so to us unless we can give it the modification which it receives from the belief in the divinity of Jesus Christ, and feel sure that the eyes which are blazing with divine omniscience are dewy with divine ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... iconoclast asserts that Jesus lacked supreme intelligence, the natural question is, "How do you know that you are right in your appraisal, 'lest haply ye be found even to fight against God'?" The answer is that we do not claim omniscience, but merely request everyone to use his or her own judgment, with intellectual honesty, examining each act or saying of Jesus without regard to presupposed ...
— The Mistakes of Jesus • William Floyd
... the people what he was. "I, whom you behold in these black garments of the priesthood—I, who ascend the sacred desk, and turn my pale face heavenward, taking upon myself to hold communion in your behalf with the Most High Omniscience—I, in whose daily life you discern the sanctity of Enoch—I, whose footsteps, as you suppose, leave a gleam along my earthly track, whereby the Pilgrims that shall come after me may be guided to the regions of the blest—I, who have laid the hand of baptism ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... usual associations of the simile, and Pinchas passed on to salute Hamburg. To Gabriel Hamburg, Pinchas was occasion for half-respectful amusement. He could not but reverence the poet's genius even while he laughed at his pretensions to omniscience, and at the daring and unscientific guesses which the poet offered as plain prose. For when in their arguments Pinchas came upon Jewish ground, he was in presence of a man who knew every ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... left almost without the necessary support of a miserable existence. Alas, Sir! must I think that such, soon, will be my lot! and from the d—mned, dark insinuations of hellish, groundless envy too! I believe, Sir, I may aver it, and in the sight of Omniscience, that I would not tell a deliberate falsehood, no, not though even worse horrors, if worse can be, than those I have mentioned, hung over my head; and I say, that the allegation, whatever villain has made it, is a lie! To the British constitution on Revolution principles, next after ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... There was scarcely ever an instance of a false accusation, for it was well known that no power could screen the delator from the exemplary punishment that awaited him; and there were no means of escaping from the omniscience and ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... anon, In momentary rapture, great with small, Omniscience with intelligency, God With man—the thunder glow from pole to pole Abolishing, a blissful moment-space, Great cloud alike and small cloud, in one fire— As sure to ebb as sure again to flow When the new receptivity deserves ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones
... an impure action, and the love of virtue itself sometimes occasions our removal from it; but in the present case the action is aggravated by the motive. Pride, vain-glory, perhaps the desire of robbing God of his pre-eminence, his omniscience, or his jurisdiction over the creature, his most sacred and incommunicable distinctions, were the dispositions ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... against 400 francs from the former, or that six times as much could ever be levied on Chinese teas as on other teas! Such a tariff called for a highly drilled army of those sufficiently rare individuals, honest douaniers, endowed also with Napoleonic activity and omniscience. But, as Chaptal remarked, the Emperor had never thought much about the needs of commerce, and he despised merchants as persons who had "neither a faith nor a country, whose sole object was gain." His own notion about commerce was that he could "make it manoeuvre like a regiment"; and ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... of almost all the great religious movements in the world's history, the beginnings of the Sibylline books are shrouded in mystery. A later age, for whom history had no secrets, with a cheap would-be omniscience told of the old woman who visited Tarquin and offered him nine books for a certain price, and when he refused to pay it, went away, burned three, and then returning offered him at the original price the six ...
— The Religion of Numa - And Other Essays on the Religion of Ancient Rome • Jesse Benedict Carter
... be impartial, comprehensive, Olympian; it would not be greatness if its miscellany were not dominated by a clear genius and if before the confusion of things the poet or philosopher were not himself delighted, exalted, and by no means confused. Nor does this presume omniscience on his part. It is not necessary to fathom the ground or the structure of everything in order to know what to make of it. Stones do not disconcert a builder because he may not happen to know what they are chemically; and so the unsolved problems of life and nature, and the ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... speed, he passed a great pile of lumber and sawdust. The fresh smell of the wet wood brought back Links—and his mother, and a sense of happiness, for he had given up "trying to reason it all out." He was no longer sure, as he once was, that he had omniscience for his guide. Indeed he was sure only of this, that the kindest way is the only way ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton
... this was over now. A third was, why, when he came out of church, sunshine always made him miserable, and he felt better able to be good when it rained or snowed hard. I might mention the inquiry whether it was not possible somehow to elude the omniscience of God; but that is a common question with thoughtful children, and indicates little that is characteristic of the individual. That he puzzled himself about the perpetual motion may pass for little likewise; but ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... touch of comradeship to their intimacy, prolonging the illusion of college friendships based on a joyous interchange of heresies. Mrs. Aubyn and Glennard represented to each other the augur's wink behind the Hillbridge idol: they walked together in that light of young omniscience from which fate so curiously excludes ...
— The Touchstone • Edith Wharton
... scheming demands omniscience, and the notary's envy had been stimulated into hatred by causes of which Tito knew nothing. That evening when Tito, returning from his critical audience with the Special Council, had brushed by Ser Ceccone on the stairs, the notary, who had only ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... side. Look on me but as man and gentleman. See, I now extend this hand to you. If, as man and gentleman, you have done that which, could all hearts be read, all secrets known, human judgment reversed by Divine omniscience, forbids you to take this hand,—then reject it, go hence: we part! But if no such act be on your conscience, however you submit to its imputation,—THEN, in the name of Truth, as man and gentleman to ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... country's sake, not knowing whether, if he laid down his life, he should ever find it again, or whether, if he took it up hereafter, he should take it up in heaven or hell. Come, parson!" he said, turning to the minister, "what has ever been conceived of omnipotence, of omniscience, so sublime, so ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... scourging or threatening them. These deputy-gods were supposed to occupy the space between the earth and moon, and, being almost numberless and invisible, their worshippers held them in the same dread as if they possessed the attribute of omniscience. ...
— Folk Lore - Superstitious Beliefs in the West of Scotland within This Century • James Napier
... by all the leading people in the metropolis, and to prophesy with wonderful accuracy what would be the sayings and doings of the twelve following hours. This was effected with an air of wonderful omniscience, and not unfrequently with an ignorance hardly surpassed by its arrogance. But the writing was clever. The facts, if not true, were well invented; the arguments, if not logical, were seductive. The presiding spirit of the paper had the gift, at any rate, of knowing what ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... for his tone is magisterial, decisive and final. This, I confess, suggests to me, that the aim of Jesus was not so much to enlighten the young man, as to stop his mouth, and keep up his own ostentation of omniscience. Had he desired to enlighten him, surely no mere dry dogmatic command was needed, but an intelligent guidance of a willing and trusting soul. I do not pretend to certain knowledge in these matters. Even when we hear the ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... events were mercifully hidden. It is only God who can bear the awful light of omniscience and of omnipresence. The things we cannot see! The things we never know! Let us be unspeakably grateful for this blessed ignorance! For many a heart would break that lives on if it only knew—if it only saw—how unnecessary was its love to those ...
— A Singer from the Sea • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... the natural omniscience of a superior being. And Mrs. Bunker perhaps was not pained to learn that her husband's family was of a lower degree than her own. But the stranger's knowledge did not end there. He talked of her husband's business—he explained the vast fishing resources of the bay and coast. ...
— Sally Dows and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... justifies us to this day in believing in whatever we may decide to believe in. The qualities attributed to reality must be qualities found in experience, and if we deny their presence in ourselves (e.g., in the case of omniscience), that is only because the idea of self, like that of matter, has already become special and the region of ideals (in which omniscience lies) has been formed into a third sphere. But before the idea of self is well ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... their exceptional claims. The attitude of omniscience and omnipotence has often been crudely stated by the Catholic hierarchy. Archbishop Walsh, of Dublin, has declared that there is no dividing line between religion and politics. Dr. Walsh has also laid down the dictum that, ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... relation to the Supreme Being. At the same time that he reflects upon his own weakness and imperfection he comforts himself with the contemplation of those Divine attributes which are employed for his safety and his welfare. He finds his want of foresight made up by the Omniscience of Him who is his support. He is not sensible of his own want of strengths when he knows that his helper is almighty. In short, the person who has a firm trust on the Supreme Being is powerful in His ...
— Essays and Tales • Joseph Addison
... The presidency of the republic seemed too limited and cramped in the constitutional restrictions. If he could have been Grand Llama of the United States, that might have come the nearest to his idea of a position. And next to that he would have luxuriated in the irresponsible omniscience of the ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 5. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... Milner could once throw the shuttle; that a Newton once watched his mother's flock.... They are likewise charged with "preaching the Gospel out of idleness." Does the Archdeacon claim the attribute of omniscience? Does he know what is in man? How does he know that they preach "the Gospel out of idleness?" ... What does he call idleness?—the reading of one or two dry discourses every Sabbath ... to one congregation, with an annual income of L200 or L300?... No; this is hard labour; ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... him. He is not satisfied that Jesus said it "in his human nature." No. It was the divine nature which said it; and it was really GOD THE SON, who did not know the day nor the hour of his own coming. He lost a part of his omniscience. He ceased to be perfect in all his attributes. We should say, then, that he ceased to be God; but Dr. Huntington maintains that he was God, nevertheless; but God less than omnipotent,—God less than omniscient; God the Son, so distinct from ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... attractions to him. This oration is graceful and strong, and possesses sufficient and appropriate eloquence. It is chiefly interesting, however, from the reserve and self-control, dictated by a nice sense of fitness, which it exhibited. Omniscience was not Mr. Webster's foible. He never was guilty of Lord Brougham's weakness of seeking to prove himself master of universal knowledge. In delivering an address on science and invention, there was a strong temptation to an orator like Mr. Webster to ...
— Daniel Webster • Henry Cabot Lodge
... supposed to be in torment, were coming into the world; and He must have known that there was no possible way for them to avert their doom. And though He loved each of them with an infinite love, He made no way of escape, but consigned them to eternal torment. Foreseeing in His omniscience that all this would happen, He did not intercept their coming, which He could easily have done; nor did He provide any means ...
— Love's Final Victory • Horatio
... and this delicate problem was left unsolved. But Mr. Waddell, who liked to get to the bottom of things, continued to ponder these matters as he marched. He mistrusted the omniscience of Struthers and the superficial infallibility of the self-satisfied Cockerell. Accordingly, after consultation with that eager searcher after knowledge, Second Lieutenant Little, he took the laudable but fatal step of carrying ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay
... Henry James is extremely difficult, and that the practice of the thousand thousand is partly to be explained by this fact. Perhaps many of them would be more dramatically inclined if the way were easier. It must always be simpler for a story-teller to use his omniscience, to dive into the minds of his people for an explanation of their acts, than to make them so act that no such explanation is ever needed. Or perhaps the state of criticism may be to blame, with its long indifference to these questions of theory; or ...
— The Craft of Fiction • Percy Lubbock
... symbol of the Three in One, the three worlds in the Soul; the three times, past, present, future, in Eternity; the three Divine Powers, Creation, Preservation, Transformation, in the one Being; the three essences, immortality, omniscience, joy, in the one Spirit. This is the Word, the Symbol, of the Master and ...
— The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali • Charles Johnston
... us is closely connected with the omnipotence of the Geheimrath and the conceited omniscience of the Professors who sit behind the green table, a product, and I venture to maintain a necessary product, of the Prussian method of education. This product, the ...
— Bismarck and the Foundation of the German Empire • James Wycliffe Headlam
... first parents when it would seduce them to eat of the tree of knowledge. Through my understanding I must acknowledge the truth of what the astronomer teaches and proves. I see the wonderful, eternal omniscience of God in the whole creation of the world—in the great and in the small, where the one attaches itself to the other, is joined with the other, in an endless harmonious entireness; and I tremble in my greatest need and sorrow. What can ...
— Pictures of Sweden • Hans Christian Andersen
... a few objects that lie contiguous to them. Their knowledge and observation turn within a very narrow circle. But as God Almighty cannot but perceive and know everything in which he resides, infinite space gives room to infinite knowledge, and is, as it were, an organ to Omniscience.' ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... in his turn. "You have indeed a curious knowledge," he says. A foible of Mr. Holt's, who did know more about books and men than, perhaps, almost any person Esmond had ever met, was omniscience; thus in every point he here professed to know, he was nearly right, but not quite. Esmond's wound was in the right side, not the left, his first general was General Lumley; Mr. Webb came out of Wiltshire, not out ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... and to the inorganic world, or in the harmonious allotment of the most varied gifts to different beings; definite recognition of time and space, as in the life of individuals, of species, in the stages of growth, in the geographical limitation of types; prescience and omniscience, as shown in the prophetic types of earlier geological ages; omnipresence, by the adjustment of the whole series of animal organisms to the various parts of the planet ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... on a tour of investigation, and returned to say that there was no chance just at present of their getting away. It was a scene of confusion which only patience and time could elucidate. The omniscience of officials had given place to a less satisfactory if more human ignorance; last come was first served, and a seat in a train seemed by no means to insure transportation. It was as well to wait for a while outside as in; so with many others they strolled ...
— A Christmas Accident and Other Stories • Annie Eliot Trumbull
... ignorance might entail on them? Would it be fair for a parent to put into a child's hands the title-deeds to all its future possessions, and a bunch of matches? And are not men children, nay, babes, in the eye of Omniscience?—The minister grew bold in his questions. Had not he as good right to ask questions ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... reached the edge of the shrubbery, and gazed keenly into the moonlit, park-like meadow below him. Peer as he might, he could see no trace of Warde. A dozen trees might conceal him. Perhaps with the omniscience of the house-master, he had divined that the wicket-gate was the ultimate place of egress. Perhaps the wicket had been used for a similar purpose when Warde himself was a boy at the Manor. It was vital to John's ...
— The Hill - A Romance of Friendship • Horace Annesley Vachell
... train for Melonsquashville, Tennessee?" and they reply, without stopping to think, "Two-forty-three, track ten, change at San Francisco." And they're right every time. Well, Jeeves gives you just the same impression of omniscience. ...
— My Man Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... The Bible does not think it worth while to proclaim the Name of God without building on the proclamation promises or commandments. There is no 'mere theology' in Scripture; and it does not speak of 'attributes,' nor give dry abstractions of infinitude, eternity, omniscience, unchangeableness, but lays stress on the personality of God, which is so apt to escape us in these abstract conceptions, and thus teaches us to think of this personal God our Father, as infinite, eternal, knowing all things, and never changing. There is all the difference ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... who "maketh lies to vanish," who "turneth wicked plots to a happy issue"—this is religion, not mythology, for this is not a story, it is the expression of a feeling. That "the Lord" whose divine omniscience and goodness is thus glorified is really the Sun, makes no difference; that is an error of judgment, a want of knowledge, but the religious feeling is splendidly manifest in the invocation. But when, in the same hymn, the Sun is described as "stepping forth from the background ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin
... ordered productivity; and federate our colonies into a world-Power of the first magnitude? Give these people the most perfect political constitution and the soundest political program that benevolent omniscience can devise for them, and they will interpret it into mere fashionable folly or canting charity as infallibly as a savage converts the philosophical theology of a Scotch missionary ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... results without the violent catastrophes, or whether a wise and good man who could appreciate the real position would have approved or condemned the actual policy. But to answer such problems with any confidence would imply a claim to a quasi-omniscience. Partisans at the time, however, answered them without hesitation, and saw in the Revolution the dawn of a new era of reason and justice, or the outburst of the fires of hell. Their view is at any rate indicative of ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... for the nobility of heart that lies beneath. But what elusive charm is there in the mother of children whose stainless virtue is her only personality? None? Yet to the all-seeing eye, to the all-comprehending brain—to that omniscience whom some call God, be it in Trinity or in Unity, and others know not what to call—these are the women who lift immeasurably above ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston
... Eternal Light of the Universe! what Adorations can express the grateful Acknowledgments of thy diffusive Bounty! Who can contemplate the beauty of thy Works, the Product of thy single Fiat, and not acknowledge thy Omnipotence, Omniscience, and extensive Goodness! What Tongue can refrain from singing thy Praise! What Heart so hard, but must be melted into Love! Oh Eternal Creator, pity my Weakness, and since I cannot speak a Gratitude adequate to thy Mercies, accept the Fulness of my ...
— A Voyage to Cacklogallinia - With a Description of the Religion, Policy, Customs and Manners of That Country • Captain Samuel Brunt
... him from Sardis a Syrian sausage-seller, named Bargus, who, with native address, had insinuated himself into his good graces and obtained a subordinate command in the army. The prying omniscience of Eutropius discovered that, years before, this same Bargus had been forbidden to enter Constantinople for some misdemeanor, and by means of this knowledge he gained an ascendency over the Syrian, and compelled him to accuse his benefactor, Timasius, of a treasonable conspiracy, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... with the air of omniscience that a father is bound to assume. "Postage stamps are stamped ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... rider: how he then resembles the man who feels wings that could bear him into light, yet who is kept down in the dark abyss! Faustus, thou art one of those fiery spirits who are not contented with the scanty meal of knowledge which Omniscience has set before them. Great is thy strength, mighty is thy soul, and bold thy will; but the curse of finite reason lies upon thee, as it does upon all. Faustus, thou art as great ...
— Faustus - his Life, Death, and Doom • Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger
... would no doubt have opened differently, and with another beginning the whole would have been different; but whether it would then have interested the world after a hundred years, as that of the real Schiller does, is a question for omniscience. Speaking humanly one can only say that the misguided paternalism of Karl Eugen in rousing the tiger proved a blessing in disguise. And the schooling itself was by no means so despicable. Schiller left the academy a good Latinist, though with but little ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... in the books, according to their works." The mention made of "the books" indicates that what is here said of the general judgment pertains exclusively to God the Father, by whose almighty power and omniscience, as I have endeavoured to show in the preceding paragraph, all the deeds and experience of the present life are held in remembrance to be brought under judgment. But it would be an error to suppose that this general judgment is different from that the process and results of which, as effected ...
— An Essay on the Scriptural Doctrine of Immortality • James Challis
... and intelligence in its turn was identified with the Idea or Logos which might be the ultimate theme of intelligence. There could be only one mind, so conceived, since there could be only one total system in the universe visible to omniscience. ...
— Some Turns of Thought in Modern Philosophy - Five Essays • George Santayana
... cleared their teaching of its lumber, and taken out a new lease of life both for it and for themselves. An infallible pope and an infallible council might have done something in this way, if good sense had been among the attributes of their omniscience. What they did do was something very different. It was as if, when the new astronomy began to be taught, the professors of that science in all the universities of Europe had met together and decided that Ptolemy's cycles and epicycles were eternal verities; that the theory of the rotation ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... in an epistle. It has nothing to do with the vain traditions of the fathers (so called), which were not heard of until after the inspired volume was completed and closed. Any subsequent commands are censures upon God's omniscience, and ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... that power rested became more doubtful, and therefore more open to attack, the papacy became more sensitive and more exacting. Pushed on by the influence of the lower population, it fell into the depths of anthropomorphism, asserting for the Virgin and the saints such attributes as omniscience, omnipresence, omnipotence. Everywhere present, they could always listen to prayer, and, if necessary, control or arrest the course of Nature. As it was certain that such doctrines must in the end be overthrown, the inevitable ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... method of conveying a falsehood with the heart only, without making the tongue guilty of an untruth, by the means of equivocation and imposture, hath quieted the conscience of many a notable deceiver; and yet, when we consider that it is Omniscience on which these endeavour to impose, it may possibly seem capable of affording only a very superficial comfort; and that this artful and refined distinction between communicating a lie, and telling one, is hardly worth the ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... of the Universe, in whose holy sight centuries are but as days; to whose omniscience the past and the future are but as one eternal present; look down upon Thy children, who still wander among the delusions of time—who still tremble with dread of dissolution, and shudder at the mysteries of the future; look down, we beseech Thee, from Thy glorious and eternal day into the dark ...
— Masonic Monitor of the Degrees of Entered Apprentice, Fellow Craft and Master Mason • George Thornburgh
... scores and hundreds of times. Has it ever struck you that they are words which, if you are a Christian man or woman, you must believe to be the words of God himself, spoken by the lips of Infallible Wisdom, and inspired by that Omniscience which sees you sitting here in this London church as plainly as It saw that other congregation which was assembled that day on the slope of the Mount of Olives, and which reads your hearts at this moment as It read theirs then? If you do not believe that, then it follows that ...
— The Missionary • George Griffith
... with a superb air of omniscience. "It was all Michael Angelo's design. The others only tinkered away ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... grow beneath our cunning hand. The more we wrote the wiser we became; the opinions of one day were rejected the next; the blind surmising of yesterday ripened into the full knowledge of to-day, and this matured into the superhuman omniscience of this evening. We have finally got so infernally clever that we have abandoned the original design of our great work, and determined to make it a compendium of everything that is accurately known up to date, and the bearing of this upon flogging ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile
... the stimulus of novelty. The Great State will, I feel convinced, regard changes in occupation as a proper circumstance in the life of every citizen; it will value a certain amateurishness in its service, and prefer it to the trite omniscience of the stale official. On that score of the necessity or versatility, if on no other score, I am flatly antagonistic to the conceptions of "Guild Socialism" which have arisen recently out of the impact of Mr. Penty and Syndicalism upon the ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... Butcher. It may be remarked in passing that these and other examples show clearly either that the spirits have the use of an excellent reference library or else that they have memories which produce something like omniscience. No human memory could possibly carry all the exact quotations which occur in such communications as The Ear ...
— The New Revelation • Arthur Conan Doyle
... sturdy Welshman, who died in service, Christian C. Pedersen, who returned to the same post years afterwards. In Mr. Denison's time David J. Ranney served, attaining later to the dignity of city missionary and an autobiography. John A. Ross will be remembered for his omniscience as to people and things about ...
— The Kirk on Rutgers Farm • Frederick Bruckbauer
... consist in? Is there a secret which India has discovered, which Europe cannot guess? Is there anything in it, after all, but barbaric superstition, destined to fade away and disappear, in the sunrise of omniscience? ...
— Bubbles of the Foam • Unknown
... conceptions clear, I add the remark that whilst we ascribe to God various attributes, the quality of which we also find applicable to creatures, only that in Him they are raised to the highest degree, e.g., power, knowledge, presence, goodness, etc., under the designations of omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence, etc., there are three that are ascribed to God exclusively, and yet without the addition of greatness, and which are all moral He is the only holy, the only blessed, the only wise, because these conceptions ...
— The Critique of Practical Reason • Immanuel Kant
... greatest error in the criminal legislation of all countries forms part of the divine providence, and man has at length discovered, by the light of reason, the folly and the wickedness of using an instrument expressly created by divine Omniscience to be abused! ...
— The Fallen Star; and, A Dissertation on the Origin of Evil • E. L. Bulwer; and, Lord Brougham
... of Grace three points must be safeguarded by all Catholic theologians, namely, man's dependence upon God as the First Cause of all his actions natural as well as supernatural, human liberty, and God's omniscience or foreknowledge of man's conduct. Following in the footsteps of St. Thomas, the Dominicans maintained that when God wishes man to perform a good act He not only gives assistance, but He actually moves or predetermines the will so that it must infallibly act. ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance to the French • Rev. James MacCaffrey
... call it a kind of Caliban. And the tentacles we threw out, clawing at everything, stealing for prop to our little theory all of man and God! It is the conceit of us that I find utterly hopeless of grace. So I drop my role of omniscience. I take my form off the hub, believing the system will maintain its gravity though I go my private way, and I promise to let you alone. Forgive me, and God bless you. Ah, yes, and many happy returns of the day. All my heart in the blessing ...
— The Kempton-Wace Letters • Jack London
... was of a confident, sanguine, impetuous nature. He had great common sense, and he saw what he saw quickly and clearly, but he did not see very far below the surface. He wrote with the conviction of an advocate, and the easy omniscience of a man whose learning is really nothing more than "general information," raised to a very high power, rather than with the subtle penetration of an original or truly philosophic intellect, like Coleridge's or De Quincey's. He always had at hand explanations of events ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... well for man that Omniscience presides at the day of judgment. "The Lord knoweth our frame; he remembereth that ...
— Henry IV, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... this way by the omniscience of all who work on it so that, when it is finally produced, the writer seldom recognizes more than a glimmer of his original idea in the ...
— Ruth Fielding on the St. Lawrence - The Queer Old Man of the Thousand Islands • Alice B. Emerson
... spurious, and was composed at a time when Cyrus was already standing before Babylon. It would indeed have required an immense amount of impudence on the part of the Prophet to bring forward, as an unassailable proof of the omniscience and omnipotence of God, an event which every one saw with his bodily eyes. By such argumentation, he would have exposed himself to general ridicule.—In chap. xli. 21-29, the discourse is formally addressed to the Gentiles; but in point of fact, the Prophet here, too, has to do with ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions. Vol. 2 • Ernst Hengstenberg
... a despotism, France a pachalik, chains on all wrists, a seal on every mouth, silence, degradation, fear, the spy the soul of all things! They have given to a man—to you!—omnipotence and omniscience! They have made that man the supreme, the only legislator, the alpha of the law, the omega of power! They have decreed that he is Minos, that he is Numa, that he is Solon, that he is Lycurgus! They have incarnated in him the people, the nation, the state, the ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo
... this evidence of an apparent omniscience rather staggered Eliphalet. But training stood by him, and he showed no dismay. Yes, he knew the Salters, and had drawed many a load out of Hiram Salters' wood-lot to help ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... plague. She now made a police-visit to the bedroom because she considered that her mother had been demanding handkerchiefs at a stage too early in the progress of the disease. Impossible that her mother should have come to the end of her own handkerchiefs! She knew with all the certitude of her omniscience that numerous clean handkerchiefs must be concealed somewhere in the ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... whom no praise can reach is aye Men's least attempts approving; Whom justice makes all-merciful Omniscience ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... forces. When another body, however, is introduced, with its varying attraction, first on one and then on the other, complications are introduced that only the most masterly minds can follow. Introduce a dozen or a million bodies, and complications arise that only Omniscience can unravel. ...
— Recreations in Astronomy - With Directions for Practical Experiments and Telescopic Work • Henry Warren
... is accepted in the literal fulness of scriptural declaration—that the three are one in purpose, plan and method, alike in all their Godly attributes; one in their divine omniscience and omnipotence; yet as separate and distinct in their personality as are any three inhabitants of earth. "Mormonism" claims that scriptures declaring the oneness of the Trinity admit of this interpretation; that ...
— The Story of "Mormonism" • James E. Talmage
... his an absolute incapacity to evaluate human beings according to station, rank or profession, or any standard but that of spiritual worth. In all this he was a complete contrast to Shakespeare. Each of the two men was like a creature of a higher world, possessed of supernatural endowments. Their omniscience of all things human, their insight into the hiddenmost springs of men's actions appear miraculous. But Shakespeare makes the impression of detachment from his works. The works do not reveal the man; while in Tolstoy the ...
— Best Russian Short Stories • Various
... intellectual ardour, of his pomp as a narrator, of his blind and doctrinaire injustices, of his jesting like a Roman Emperor's, of the strength of his happiness upon a journey, of his buckishness, of the queer lack of surprising phrases in his work, of his measured omniscience, of the immense weight of tradition in the manner of his writing. There are many contemporary writers whose work seems to be a development of journalism. Mr. Belloc's is the child of four literatures, or, maybe, half a dozen. He ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd
... in truth write a tale of the famine, after that it would behove the author to write a tale of the pestilence; and then another, a tale of the exodus. These three wonderful events, following each other, were the blessings coming from Omniscience and Omnipotence by which the black clouds were driven from the Irish firmament. If one through it all could have dared to hope, and have had from the first that wisdom which has learned to acknowledge that His mercy endureth for ever! And then the same author going on with his series would give in ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... greater number of the speakers it was asserted in the strongest and most unqualified words that language could supply. What is more, their principal arguments were grounded on the position, that the Bible throughout was dictated by Omniscience, and therefore in all its parts infallibly true and obligatory, and that the men whose names are prefixed to the several books or chapters were in fact but as different pens in the hand of one and the same Writer, and ...
— Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit etc. • by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... strength, to overthrow all the forces of iniquity? Between this time and that there may be long seasons of darkness—the chariot-wheels of God's Gospel may seem to drag heavily; but here is the promise, and yonder is the throne; and when Omniscience has lost its eyesight, and Omnipotence falls back impotent, and Jehovah is driven from His throne, then the Church of Jesus Christ can afford to be despondent, but never until then. Despots may plan and armies may march, and the congresses of the ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... daughter by her. In his thirtieth year his parents died and with the permission of his brother Nandivardhana he became a monk. After twelve years of self-mortification and meditation he attained omniscience (kevala, cf. bodhi of the Buddhists). He lived to preach for forty-two years more, and attained mok@sa (emancipation) some years before Buddha in about 480 ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta
... feeling greatly honored by the fact that my predecessor in the course was Theodore Parker, and my successor Ralph Waldo Emerson. Both talked with me much about my subject, and Parker surprised me. He was the nearest approach to omniscience I had ever seen. He was able to read, not only Russian, but the Old Slavonic. He discussed the most intimate details of things in Russia, until, at last, I said to him, "Mr. Parker, I would much rather sit at your feet and listen to your information regarding Russia, ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... thought, but will act entirely, or see how the thing stands in God, we know the particular thing, and every thing, and every man. For the Maker of all things and all persons stands behind us and casts his dread omniscience through us over things. ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... children of men should be connected with the same earthly monarchy. All believers are "one in Christ;" they have all "one Lord, one faith, one baptism;" but "the kingdom of God cometh not with observation," and the unity of the saints on earth can be discerned only by the eye of Omniscience. They are all sustained by the same living bread which cometh down from heaven, but they may receive their spiritual provision as members of ten thousand separated Churches. All who truly love the Saviour are united to Him by a link which can never be broken; and no ecclesiastical ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... the Monarch understands them at all, he accepts them as his own—for he cannot conceive of any other except himself—and plumes himself upon the variety of 'Its Thought' as an instance of creative Power. Let us leave this God of Pointland to the ignorant fruition of his omnipresence and omniscience: nothing that you or I can do can rescue him from ...
— Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (Illustrated) • Edwin A. Abbott
... half-baked thinking, following upon, and as the result of, the barracks and corporal methods of education, have turned the Protestant population from the churches. The slovenly and patchy omniscience of the partly educated, leads them to believe that they know enough not to believe. Renan, though a doubter himself, saw the weakness of this form of disbelief when he wrote: "There are in reality but few people who have a right ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... be obscure. A member of the literary fraternity which boasts the names of Lucian and Voltaire, a firm believer in the force of common sense and rudimentary logic, Agur ridicules the theologians of his day with a malicious cruelty which is explained, if not warranted, by the pretensions of omniscience and the practice of intolerance that provoked it. The unanswerable argument which Jahveh considered sufficient to silence his servant Job, Agur deems effective against the dogmatical doctors of ...
— The Sceptics of the Old Testament: Job - Koheleth - Agur • Emile Joseph Dillon
... us the only one, even when we looked at the stars. But at least one other had been created, and before us appeared its visible sign,—my lord the elephant! There he was, swaying along, conscious philosopher, conscious might, yet holding his omniscience in the background, and keeping a wary eye out for the peanuts with which we simple country souls had not provided ourselves. There was one curious thing about it all. We had seen the circus at Sudleigh, as I have said, yet ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown
... Instantly I conceived consuming respect for the man who was so circumstantial, so monotonous, so entirely purposeless a liar. With him it must have been a case of art for art's sake. The joke sustained so gravely through a respected lifetime was of that order of joke which is shared with omniscience. But what struck me more cogently upon reflection was the fact that these immeasurable trivialities, which had struck me as utterly vulgar and arid when I thought they were true, immediately became picturesque and almost brilliant when I thought they were inventions of the human ...
— The Defendant • G.K. Chesterton
... about decided to throw Greenwich Village omniscience overboard and admit privately to himself that people like Peter can be both human and interesting even if they do live in the East Sixties instead of Macdougal Alley when a page comes in discreetly for Johnny Chipman. Johnny rises like an agitated blond ...
— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet
... has not yet attained to the omniscience in Naval affairs that his predecessor acquired in the course of twelve years' continuous occupancy of the post. But Sir JAMES CRAIG can handle an awkward questioner no less deftly than "Dr. MAC." Witness his excuse ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, November 24, 1920 • Various
... being who pervades the universe, had been confined in the womb of Mary; that his eternal duration had been marked by the days, and months, and years of human existence; that the Almighty had been scourged and crucified; that his impassible essence had felt pain and anguish; that his omniscience was not exempt from ignorance; and that the source of life and immortality expired on Mount Calvary. These alarming consequences were affirmed with unblushing simplicity by Apollinaris, [18] bishop of Laodicea, and ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... into a seat, with an expectation as dull as her despair—the expectation that she was going to be punished. But Grandcourt took no notice: he was satisfied to have let her know that she had not deceived him, and to keep a silence which was formidable with omniscience. He went out that evening, and her plea of feeling ill was accepted without even ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... in David's case all that passionate sense of a broken bubble and a scattered dream, which had haunted him so long after he left Kinder, had entered into and helped toward his infatuation with his new masters. They brought him an indescribable sense of freedom—omniscience almost. ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the function and power of love is based on his belief in its divine origin. Twice at least, in "Easter Day" and "Saul," his characters work out from an overpowering recognition of God's omniscience and omnipotence to a final recognition that his love is equal in scope with his power and knowledge. And he counts human service as most complete when, as in David before Saul, it reaches out to God's love and recruits its failing ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... even great human infirmity we cannot expect to find. Again, it is not the judge's business to fix the degree of moral guilt; that not even the best and wisest of men can do. The inscrutable fact of the degree of moral guilt eludes all human insight. Only omniscience could decide who is more guilty relatively to opportunities, advantages, circumstances; who has made the braver effort to escape wrongdoing; whether the admired preacher, or the culprit on his way to the gallows; whether ...
— The Essentials of Spirituality • Felix Adler
... Greek Anthology the sun always shines on the fisherman's cottage by the beach; we associate the Vishnu Purana with lakes and houses, Keats with nightingales in forest dim, while the long grass waving on the lonely heath is the last memorial of the fading fame of Ossian. Of course Shakspeare's omniscience included all natural phenomena; but the rest, great or small, associate themselves with some special aspects, and not with the daily atmosphere. Coming to our own times, one must quarrel with Ruskin as taking rather the artist's view of Nature, selecting ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... to that elder brother's natural resentment at the younger's course the blinding power of a great sorrow, for the father of the two sons was dead. He had died of a broken heart. Possessed of no omniscience of mind or vision, he had been unable to foresee the long delayed turning point in the career of his younger son and death came too swiftly to enable them to meet again. So long as he had strength, that father had stood, as it were, at the top of the hill looking down ...
— A Little Book for Christmas • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... does not invariably tarry. The arm of the Lord is not shortened, though in these days of omniscience man has a larger faith in his own; and the Ghazi, heading post-haste through the dusk plunged unwittingly into a group of villagers ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... were often shortened by it, but they had been doubly well filled. From this restless curiosity, bent towards past ages and foreign countries, towards everything that was remote, unknown and different, came that striking appearance of omniscience and universality, and that prodigious wealth of imagery, allusions and ideas of every kind that are to be found in all the authors of that time, small as well as great, and which unites in one common bond Rabelais and Shakespeare, ...
— The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare • J. J. Jusserand
... only explain nature as it reveals itself to the senses in terms of consciousness. The explanation may be all wrong in the eyes of omniscience. All one can say is that it is a practical working basis, and is good enough for mundane purposes. But if I am asked if I can solve the riddle of the Universe I can only answer, No. Brunetiere then ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences Vol 2 (of 2) • James Marchant
... power too often means, in the minds of men, only some abstract notion of boundless bodily strength. God's omniscience too often means, only some physical fancy of innumerable telescopic or microscopic eyes. God's infinite wisdom too often means, only some abstract notion of boundless acuteness of brain. And lastly—I am sorry to have to say it, but it must be said,—God's infinite majesty too often means, in the ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley
... appeal, and the author's contribution to the eternal problem of evil, are found in xxxviii. I to xlii. 6. It is not a solution, but through the wonders of the natural world, it is a fuller revelation to the mind of Job, of the omnipotence, the omniscience, the wisdom, and the goodness of God. Even though he cannot discern the reason of his own suffering, he learns to know and to trust the wisdom and love of ...
— The Origin & Permanent Value of the Old Testament • Charles Foster Kent
... education; dilettantism; rudiments &c (beginning) 66. deep knowledge, profound knowledge, solid knowledge, accurate knowledge, acroatic knowledge[obs3], acroamatic knowledge[obs3], vast knowledge, extensive knowledge, encyclopedic knowledge, encyclopedic learning; omniscience, pantology[obs3]. march of intellect; progress of science, advance of science, advance of learning; schoolmaster abroad. [person who knows much] scholar &c. 492. V. know, ken, scan, wot[obs3]; wot aware[obs3], be aware &c. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... evil. The whole stab of the story is that man can't: because while evil does not care for good, good must care for evil. Or, in other words, man cannot escape from God, because good is the God in man; and insists on omniscience. This point, which is good psychology and also good theology and also good art, has missed its main intention merely because ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... could flash as of old; the voice would presently once more ring harsh and servant and equal alike would cringe before him; for still he held half Moscow in the iron grip of his terrible omniscience. But Ivan noted the color of his hair—that dead white that is not the snow of years but the ashen colorlessness borne of continuous nervous strain. And there was the unexpected stoop of the powerful shoulders, the occasional ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... his father died at Scotsbrig, after a residence there of six years. His son saw him last in August 1831, when, referring to his Craigenputtock solitude, he said: "Man, it's surely a pity that thou shouldst sit yonder with nothing but the eye of Omniscience to see thee, and thou with such a gift ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... a cosmogonic poet producing the firework of the universe under the dome of the infinite. But why then give ourselves such gratuitous trouble to learn? In our dreams, at least, nightmare excepted, we endow ourselves with complete ubiquity, liberty and omniscience. Are we then less ingenious and inventive awake ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... retorts Waterland, 'dispute against the notion of one king under another; what I insist upon is that a great king and a little king make two kings; (consequently a supreme God and an inferior God make two Gods).' Dr. Clarke did not altogether deny omniscience to be an attribute of Christ, but he affirmed it to be a relative omniscience, communicated to him from the Father. 'That is, in plain language,' retorted Waterland, 'the Son knows all things, except that He is ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... point of view that shall comprehend their relations, and effect such reconciliations or transformations as shall enable them to constitute a universe. Philosophy always assumes the hypothetical view of omniscience. The necessity of such a final criticism is implicit in every scientific item of knowledge, and in every judgment that is passed upon life. Philosophy makes a distinct and peculiar contribution to human knowledge by its ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry
... we can pick up precious grains of knowledge, but it is an oracle in itself, which, if properly consulted, will give us plain answers to our modern speculations, and will possibly reprove us for our conceited assumption of omniscience. ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... essential element of wit,—perhaps, also, of pleasure; and it is the ill-fortune of professional reviewers, not only that surprise is necessarily something as rare with them as a June frost, but that loyalty to their extemporized omniscience should forbid them to acknowledge, even if they ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... know of your gladness," returned the Idiot. "I didn't quite say that education was downing ignorance. I plead guilty to the charge of holding the belief that unskilled omniscience interferes very materially with skilled sciolism in skilled sciolism's efforts ...
— Coffee and Repartee • John Kendrick Bangs
... consider the world too wise to be fooled in almost any way," answered his uncle. "Look at the various isms which have sprung up, even in our own day. Think of the imposture of Mormonism,—it has fairly peopled a territory. Think of the pretensions of clairvoyance, claiming almost omniscience and omnipresence for the human spirit. Think of Matthias and his followers. But remarkable as that delusion was, it is almost forgotten now, so many extravagancies tread upon one another's heels, and hustle each its predecessor off the stage. Spirit-rapping ...
— Holidays at the Grange or A Week's Delight - Games and Stories for Parlor and Fireside • Emily Mayer Higgins
... the brink of a flippant claim of omniscience, but realizing in time the agony she must be suffering he checked ...
— The Clue of the Twisted Candle • Edgar Wallace
... red breast clearer and more exultant, as its watchful gaze, bearing in its inscrutable depths the mystery of all the centuries; the Omniscience of DIVINITY, discovers a cherry tree ...
— History of the American Negro in the Great World War • W. Allison Sweeney |
