"Rationally" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... whole, therefore, attending closely to the symptoms of this disorder as they have been described, and practising such means of cure as have been recommended, we may rationally hope that its virulence may abate, and the number of its victims annually diminish. But if the more discerning part of the community anticipate a different result, and the preceding observations appear to have presented but a narrow and partial view of the mischiefs of the ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... she said, she was between sleeping and waking; that is, she did not know whether she was awake or asleep, and the cunning Devil it seems was satisfied with her Assent given so, when she was asleep, or neither asleep or awake, so taking the Advantage of her Incapacity to act rationally. ...
— The History of the Devil - As Well Ancient as Modern: In Two Parts • Daniel Defoe
... contribute to strengthen your conviction that the people of the United States, in bestowing its sympathy upon my cause, does not support a dead cause, but one which has a life, and whose success is rationally sure. ...
— Select Speeches of Kossuth • Kossuth
... us for the sport, if you are for a cool argument upon that subject, I am ready to accept the challenge. And first, whether are you for managing it analogically, or dialogically?' 'I am for managing it rationally,' cried Moses, quite happy at being permitted to dispute. 'Good again,' cried the 'Squire, 'and firstly, of the first. I hope you'll not deny that whatever is is. If you don't grant me that, I can go no further.'—'Why,' returned Moses, 'I think I may grant that, and ...
— The Vicar of Wakefield • Oliver Goldsmith
... however, upon the steps of the church-door, resolving to wait the appointed time for his kinsman. A few moments were consumed in philosophical speculations upon the species of man who had just left him; but having settled this point shrewdly, rationally, and satisfactorily, he was compelled to look elsewhere for his amusement. And first he threw his eyes along the street. It was of more respectable appearance than most of those into which he had wandered, and the moon, ...
— The Snow Image • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... "that the gentlemen who have started so many possible objections would try to show us that what they so much deprecate is probable.... Because power may be abused, shall we be reduced to anarchy? What hinders our state legislatures from abusing their powers?... May we not rationally suppose that the persons we shall choose to administer the government will be, in general, good men?" General Thompson said he was surprised to hear such an argument from a clergyman, who was professionally ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... unlikely that either you or any of your friends will see or hear anything more of him. Guyes himself is by no means keen on him and only had him as best man because a friend failed him at the last minute. If you behave rationally the whole affair will probably pass off of itself. Everyone knows the fellow was intoxicated, and no one is likely to pay any lasting attention to what he said. Treat the matter as unworthy of notice, and you will very possibly hear no more of it! But if you kick up a row, you will ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell
... that perfect prince of pulpit exegetes, lays down this canon, and continually himself acts upon it, that 'the context of a scripture is half its interpretation; . . . if a man would open a place of scripture, he should do it rationally; he should go and consider the words before and the words after.' Now, let us apply this rule to the interpretation of this text out of Rutherford, and look at the context, before and after, out of which ...
— Samuel Rutherford - and some of his correspondents • Alexander Whyte
... country," Clarendon honestly tells us while eulogizing the Peace, "was full of pride and mutiny and discontent." Thousands were quitting England for America. The gentry held aloof from the Court. "The common people in the generality and the country freeholders would rationally argue of their own rights and the oppressions which were laid upon them." If Charles was content to deceive himself, there was one man among his ministers who saw that the people were right in their policy of patience, and that unless ...
— History of the English People, Volume V (of 8) - Puritan England, 1603-1660 • John Richard Green
... ought to be clothed with all the powers requisite to complete execution of its trust. And unless it can be shown that the circumstances which may affect the public safety are reducible within certain determinate limits; unless the contrary of this position can be fairly and rationally disputed, it must be admitted, as a necessary consequence, that there can be no limitation of that authority which is to provide for the defense and protection of the community, in any matter essential to its efficacy that is, in any matter essential to the FORMATION, DIRECTION, ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... giddiness, or delirium, followed by a discharge or vomiting of black bile, invariably died after lingering one, two, or three days, their bodies being covered with small black spots similar to grains of gun-powder; in this state, however, they possessed their intellects, and spoke rationally till their dissolution. ...
— An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa • Abd Salam Shabeeny
... I am certain that my amnesty will be granted in the course of 1858 at the latest, and I hope that this will suddenly change my situation, to the extent, at least, that it will depend upon myself to find a solid basis for my social existence. All I can rationally care for, considering that I have no chance of success in any other direction, must be to secure for myself a free, unencumbered, and not too limited income for the next few years, until my great work is completed and produced. Nothing appears more adapted to the achievement of this purpose ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 2 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... when your article was broached, we fancied we discovered a latent thought beneath every word you uttered. That was the way, Rodion Romanovitch, that my conviction grew little by little. 'And yet,' said I to myself, 'all that may be explained in quite a different way, and perhaps more rationally. After all, a real proof, however slight, would be far more valuable.' But, when I heard all about the bell-ringing, my doubts vanished; I fancied I had the indispensable proof, and did not seem to care ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... impossible to apply such methods now, owing to the ignorance and poverty of our scattered farming population; but imagine the problem of providing the food supply of our nation once taken in hand systematically and rationally, by scientists! All the poor and rocky land set apart for a national timber reserve, in which our children play, and our young men hunt, and our poets dwell! The most favorable climate and soil for each product selected; the exact requirements of the community known, and the acreage figured accordingly; ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... endowed with energy, indeed, but this does nothing of itself but from Him who implanted it. Examine any other earthly object, like a silkworm, bee or other small creature. View it first naturally, then rationally, and at length spiritually, and if you can think deeply, you will be astounded at all you see. Let wisdom speak in you, and you will exclaim in astonishment, "Who does not see the divine in such things? They are all of divine wisdom." Still ...
— Angelic Wisdom about Divine Providence • Emanuel Swedenborg
... something like bears, mows and mops like apes, sometimes snakes, that hissed me into madness. 'Twas like St. Anthony's temptations. Mercy on us, that God should give His favourite children, men, mouths to speak with, to discourse rationally, to promise smoothly, to flatter agreeably, to encourage warmly, to counsel wisely: to sing with, to drink with, and to kiss with: and that they should turn them into the mouths of adders, bears, wolves, hyenas, and whistle like tempests, and emit breath ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... attention to the actual types and methods of that governing and official class, into whose power trams and trades and shops and houses were already passing, amid loud Fabian cheers for the progress of Socialism. He looked at modern parliamentary government; he looked at it rationally and steadily and not without reflection. And the consequence was that he was put in the dock, and very nearly put in the lock-up, for calling it what ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton
... such examples of the highest, the purest, the most perfect power, as can be found only in the works of the greatest among poets. There is not, as far as my studies have ever extended, a third English poet to whom these words might rationally be attributed by the conjecture ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... this fundamental principle of the non-identity of God and man is recognised, can the facts of human personality, {144} freedom and responsibility for willed acts be rationally based and defended. ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... such large moving parties were discovered again. If we conclude, that the summer light of the glowworm is displayed as a signal taper, the appearance of this autumnal light can have no such object in view, nor can we rationally assign any use of it to the creature itself, unless, indeed, it serves as a point of union in these supposed migrations, like the leading call in the flight of night-moving birds. The activity and numbers of these insects, in the above-mentioned evening, enabled me to observe the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, No. - 361, Supplementary Issue (1829) • Various
... you have been very silly indeed in making such a fuss about those rabbits' tails; and you have been very naughty indeed to-day, VERY NAUGHTY, in crying so ridiculously, and teazing all the servants, because of one being lost. You can't play with them rationally, nurse is sure, and so we think you will be very much better without them. Grandmamma has sent me to tell you—YOU WILL NEVER SEE THE TODS, AS YOU CALL ...
— Aunt Judy's Tales • Mrs Alfred Gatty
... of arms forbade the defence of a fort not rationally defensible; but it was over hardly construed against a gallant gentleman. Grey was a fierce, stern man. It was Grey who hung the priests in Oxfordshire from their church towers. It was Grey who ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude
... SCHOOL.—The Greeks were the first to investigate rationally the causes of things, and to try to comprehend the world as a complete system. The earliest phase of this movement was on the side of physics, or natural philosophy. Homer and Hesiod had accounted for the operations ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... against any attempt of the enemy to march upon Washington. This campaign of Stonewall Jackson's has been much lauded by military writers; but its temporary success resulted from good luck rather than military ability. Rationally considered, it was an imprudent and even reckless adventure that courted and would have resulted in destruction or capture had the junction of forces under McDowell, Shields, and Fremont, ordered by President Lincoln, not been thwarted by the mistake and delay of Fremont. It was an episode ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... so, Margaret? No, my presentiment is of a different character. But it is very foolish and silly to allow the feeling to weigh with me. I will try to think more rationally. Say nothing of this, however, and least of all ...
— Hardscrabble - The Fall of Chicago: A Tale of Indian Warfare • John Richardson
... exhibit itself; but discontent is only the necessary condition of improvement; for a man will not be stimulated to rise up into a higher condition unless he be first made dissatisfied with the lower condition out of which he has to rise. To be satisfied is to repose; while, to be rationally dissatisfied, is to contrive, to work, and to act, with an ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... unable to speak. Mary, desirous that Mr. Crusoe should not misunderstand their flight, explained the affair to Mr. Hunter, a little more rationally ...
— Virginia of Elk Creek Valley • Mary Ellen Chase
... other nation who have horses I fear the successfull issue of our voyage will be very doubtfull or at all events much more difficult in it's accomplishment. we are now several hundred miles within the bosom of this wild and mountanous country, where game may rationally be expected shortly to become scarce and subsistence precarious without any information with rispect to the country not knowing how far these mountains continue, or wher to direct our course to pass them to advantage ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... the man who has actually achieved goodness, and tries to make a science and art of goodness, to find a way in which it can be clearly known and rationally and effectively taught. "Can virtue be taught?" is his characteristic question. The chief result of his keen scrutiny is to bring to light how little men really know of the higher life,—how little he knows of it himself. The effect of this revelation ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... and the occasional introduction of new immigrants, vary; and thus to act on the reproductive system of the organism, on which he is at work, and so keep its organization somewhat plastic. With time enough, such a Being might rationally (without some unknown law opposed him) aim at ...
— The Foundations of the Origin of Species - Two Essays written in 1842 and 1844 • Charles Darwin
... the chief interlocutor hits Yarranton rather hard for the miscarriage of his "improvements." "I know," says he, "when and where you undertook for a small charge to make a river navigable, and it has cost the proprietors about six times as much, and is not yet effective; nor can any man rationally predict when it will be. I know since you left it your son undertook it, and this winter shamefully left his undertaking." Yarranton's friends immediately replied in a four-page folio, entitled 'England's Improvements Justified; and the Author thereof, Captain Y., vindicated from the Scandals ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... nothing like a little plain speaking. But I need, not trouble my brains about the matter; I shall probably never meet either of them again, so what does it signify? She certainly is the loveliest girl I ever saw, though! heigho!" and, with a sigh, for which I should have been somewhat puzzled rationally to account, I took up my gun, and set off for a day's ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... mountaineer's. But a mountaineer's instinct in similar circumstances is—what? Why, to fly straight to his native mountains. In an agony of terror, in an access of despair, when all else fails, he strikes a bee-line for the hills he loves; rationally or irrationally, he seems to think he can hide there. Hugo Le Geyt, with his frank boyish nature, his great Devonian frame, is sure to have done so. I know his mood. He has ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... sure, but there was in it the force of concentration. He felt outraged, and perhaps it was an absurdity on his part, but I venture to suggest rather in degree than in kind. I have a notion that no usual, normal father is pleased at parting with his daughter. No. Not even when he rationally appreciates "Jane being taken off his hands" or perhaps is able to exult at an excellent match. At bottom, quite deep down, down in the dark (in some cases only by digging), there is to be found a certain ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... attraction of the inarticulate. . . . In moments of more intense and genuine feeling . . . [man] does not as a rule use or at least confine himself to articulate speech. . . . All children . . . fall naturally, long after they are able to express themselves as it is called rationally, into a sort of pleasant gibberish when they are alone and pleased or even displeased. . . . It must be a not infrequent experience of most people that one frequently falls into pure jingle and nonsense verse of the nursery kind. . . . I should myself, though I may not carry many people ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... co-operation of his confederate or some other favourable circumstance might put it in his power to act more efficaciously. Of any brilliant success in Scotland he could not, at this time, entertain any hope, nor, if he had, could he rationally expect that any events in that quarter would make the sort of impression here which, on the other hand, his success would produce in Scotland. With money he was wholly unprovided; nor does it appear, whatever may have been the inclination of some considerable men, such as ...
— A History of the Early Part of the Reign of James the Second • Charles James Fox
... Proof.- To act rationally, is nothing else (III:iii. and III:Def.ii.) but to perform those actions, which follow from the necessity, of our nature {to persist} considered in itself alone. But pain is bad, in so far as it diminishes ...
— Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata - Part I: Concerning God • Benedict de Spinoza
... millionaires, and she married him a year ago after thirteen years of widowhood. She says she still has 200 "negroes," who won't go away and won't work, and she has them to support. She talked very rationally about the war, and says not a soul at the South would have slavery back if they could.... I called at Mrs. B.'s yesterday—at exactly the right moment, she said; for five surgeons had just decided that the operation had ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... does require Mr. Drake, and he is a Parliament man, therefore a man counted able to speak rationally, to plead this cause of digging with me.[115:1] And if he show a just and rational title that Lords of Manors have to the Commons, and that they have a just power from God to call it their right, shutting out others, then I will ...
— The Digger Movement in the Days of the Commonwealth • Lewis H. Berens
... Phyllis showed traces of having spent a bad night. But she spoke rationally and not in the wild way in which she had spoken before retiring, and her father felt that there was no need for him to be uneasy in regard to her condition. He allowed her to go to the side of her friend, Ella, and as he was leaving them together in each ...
— Phyllis of Philistia • Frank Frankfort Moore
... been voted to Jenner, for his discovery of the vaccine inoculation. The liberality of parliament was never more rationally employed. The history of the man, and the discovery, have been long before the public. But the most curious circumstance of the whole is, that the facts of the disease, and the remedy, should have remained ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... of filtration may rationally be selected at which the value of the possible danger resulting from an increase in rate is equal to the saving that may be made in cost by its use. This point must be a matter of individual judgment. The tendency of the last few years has been to use higher rates, or, ...
— Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, vol. LXXII, June, 1911 • E. D. Hardy
... lot," said Jonah. "Besides, you've eaten your cake. If you'd limited yourself last night and played rationally, instead ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... unable to command any certain part of the day, began to sit up at night. This led to a direct clash of wills. Mr. Fullerton said that the girl was doing her best to ruin her health for life; Mrs. Fullerton wished to know why Hadria, who had all the day at her disposal, could not spend the night rationally. ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... sufficiently faithful to observe our trust. Indeed, with the extension of territory, with the multiplication of interests, with the varieties, increasing from time to time, of the products of this great country, the bonds which bind the Union together should have increased. Rationally considered, they have increased, because the free trade which was established in the beginning has now become more valuable to the people of the United States than their trade with all the ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... crazy girl had been waked by the ravings of the Persian, and was anxiously enquiring if the dog—the dreadful dog—was there. But she soon allowed herself to be quieted by Paula, and she answered the questions put to her so rationally and gently, that her nurse called the physician who could confirm Paula in her hope that a favorable change had taker place in her mental condition. Her words were melancholy and mild; and when Paula remarked on ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... that we are fully justified in the conclusion that nuts and nut products, if rationally used in our diets, are as digestible and fully as valuable from a nutritional point of view as ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Sixth Annual Meeting. Rochester, New York, September 1 and 2, 1915 • Various
... Gogyrvan, though, were perplexing. These men who considered that all you possessed was loaned you to devote to the service of your God, your King and every woman who crossed your path, could hardly be behaving rationally. To talk of serving God sounded as sonorously and as inspiritingly as a drum: yes, and a drum had nothing but air in it. The priests said so-and-so: but did anybody believe the gallant Bishop of Merion, for example, was always ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... of mental stupor up to complete unconsciousness was met with, but in some instances where the pulse, respiration, and general bodily condition pointed to speedy dissolution, the patients answered rationally often between moans or cries indicative ...
— Surgical Experiences in South Africa, 1899-1900 • George Henry Makins
... rationally required of the student of philosophy is not a preliminary and absolute, but a gradual and progressive, abrogation of prejudices.—SIR W. ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... free ourselves from a manner of thinking induced by inhibitions developed through ages of taboo control, and look at the problem rationally, we must admit that the chief interest of society would be in the eugenic value of the children born into it. At the present time, however, the emphasis seems to be chiefly upon the manner of birth, that is, the principal ...
— Taboo and Genetics • Melvin Moses Knight, Iva Lowther Peters, and Phyllis Mary Blanchard
... It was as if his infernal majesty had taken a lesson from his sacred majesty, and issued a book of sports for his loyal subjects. "The Revolution put to rights the faith of the country as well as its constitution." "The laws were more liberally interpreted and rationally administered. The trade of witch-finding ceased to be reputable or profitable;" and that silly compilation, the "Demonology" of James, which, with the severe laws enacted against witchcraft by Henry the Eighth and Elizabeth, had conjured up more witches and familiars than they could ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... the love, of which he had discoursed to her, had not come in the least as he had said it would—summoned by his counsel after he had searched and found the man whom he decided would be best for her to marry. No; love had not approached her logically, rationally, as result of careful thought by a third party; it had come, instead, as might a burglar, breaking in; an enemy, making an assault upon an unsuspecting city in the night. She had yielded up the treasures of the casket of her heart ...
— The Old Flute-Player - A Romance of To-day • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... Rationally we must admit that it is best so. But then, whatever Linnaeus may say, man is not a rational animal—especially in his ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... notice? Does not this (if it be the case) indicate that they are possessed with the pride of the devil? What! poor sinful mortals, do they exalt themselves above their fellowmen? Or are they ashamed to let their sentiments be known? Are they sensible that they cannot rationally defend their doctrines if they were scrutinized? Or, indeed, have they the truth on their side, and yet fear to let it be known that they believe it, lest they should become unpopular? Alas! there are too many whose sentiments may be correct, yet through fear of getting the ...
— American Lutheranism - Volume 1: Early History of American Lutheranism and The Tennessee Synod • Friedrich Bente
... piece, that if exhibited before an American audience would simply disgust some, and make others morbidly attentive. This kind of literature, comic or tragic, disseminated as it everywhere is among impulsive and passionate Russian readers, has been anything but morally healthful. One might as rationally go about and poison wells. And the Russian youth are sophisticated to a degree that seems to us almost startling. In 1903, a newspaper in Russia sent out thousands of blanks to high school boys and girls all over the country, to ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... the one point on which he is wrong. I have argued with him vainly by the hour together. He possesses, unfortunately, an acute nervous sensibility and a vivid imagination; and besides, he has, as I suspect, been superstitiously brought up as a child. It would be probably useless to argue rationally with him on certain spiritual subjects, even if his mind was in perfect health. He has a good deal of the mystic and the dreamer in his composition; and science and logic are but broken reeds to depend upon with ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins
... Communism as regards the consumption of some objects of first necessity, bought by the municipalities, and sold by them at cost price. And the third attempt was to introduce a wide national system of rationally established prices of all commodities, for which the real cost of production and moderate trade profits had to be taken into account. The Convention worked hard at this scheme, and had nearly completed its work, when reaction took ...
— The Conquest of Bread • Peter Kropotkin
... respecting the intermarriage of foreigners and Japanese, which you say is "now very much agitated among our scholars and politicians" and which you say is "one of the most difficult problems," my reply is that, as rationally answered, there is no difficulty at all. It should be positively forbidden. It is not at root a question of social philosophy. It is at root a question of biology. There is abundant proof, alike furnished by the intermarriages of human races and by the interbreeding of animals, that when ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn
... be possible, if this deleterious influence were exhausted upon the digestive organs and the blood, in its first stages. And, as we suppose that fever and congestion constitute an attack upon the red blood, which is exhibited by hurried pulsation, we might rationally infer that the next degree would be gangrene of the globule, causing sloughing, the same as if it were carried to the muscles, or surface. This sloughing of the globule would be the same as if exhibited ...
— Cattle and Their Diseases • Robert Jennings
... said Balthasar; "she will be ready to act rationally then, and will not throw any hinderance in the way of my plan. Surely you, who are tolerably well acquainted with me, ought to have perceived long ago that I had designed the child for Eleazar. I mean her to marry, to ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... acted on the belief that "care killed a cat," and that "a light heart makes work light." His hearty good humor has had no small share in attracting and retaining customers, and has at the same time enabled him to rationally enjoy the prosperity his labors have brought him. But his good humor never leads him to abate a jot of his shrewd watchfulness in business matters, and to his prudence and keen observation are owing the fact ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... that, as a violent emotion caused by a sudden shock can kill or craze a human being, there is no perversion of the faculties, no prejudice, no change of taste or temper, no eccentricity, no antipathy, which such a cause may not rationally account for. He would not be surprised, he said to himself, to find that some early alarm, like that which was experienced by Peter the Great or that which happened to Pascal, had broken some spring in this young man's nature, or so changed its mode of action as to account for the exceptional ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... not a vanishing type, but a constant and contemporary influence. Where it is impossible to praise, to defend, or to excuse, the burden of blame may yet be lightened by adjustment and distribution, and he is more rationally intelligible when illustrated by lights falling not only from the century he wrote in, but from our own, which has seen the course of its history twenty-five times diverted by ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... said she didn't love Dick, and would as soon marry my chauffeur—or words to that effect. Explained everything—or, if she didn't explain, looked at me, and I thought she had explained. I forget now whether she did explain or not, rationally and satisfactorily, but it doesn't matter. There is no one like her, and I have reached a stage of idiocy concerning her which I would blush to describe. I see now that the feeling which a very young man, hardly out of boyhood, ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... stay-at-home reader with almost every city on the European continent; but a view in Van Dieman's Land is much more of a novelty. It is comparatively a terra incognita, about which every one must feel some curiosity, though more rationally expressed than that of a King of Persia, who asked what sort of a place America was—"underground, or how?" For the purpose of giving a general idea of a country, a panoramic painting is well adapted: the size of the objects is at once natural, there is no straining ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction No. 485 - Vol. 17, No. 485, Saturday, April 16, 1831 • Various
... admire it; it's only that one's surprised to find a woman, or for the matter of that anybody, acting up to his or her convictions. That's what I've always felt; 'tis the Nemesis of reason; if people begin by thinking rationally, the danger is that they may end by acting ...
— The Woman Who Did • Grant Allen
... to be a personification of my youth, not a human being: I felt to him in such a variety of ways that it would have been impossible to have accosted him rationally. In the first place, his startling likeness to Catharine connected him fearfully with her. That, however, which you may suppose the most potent to arrest my imagination is in reality the least: for what is not connected with her to me? and what ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... fair medical, legal, or other watchful experience; that it is as well established and as common a state of mind as any with which observers are acquainted; and that it is one of the first elements, above all others, rationally to be suspected in, and strictly looked for, and separated from, any question of ...
— The Signal-Man #33 • Charles Dickens
... Our people get their ideas of manliness early; and as for kneeling in churches, we have some superstitious-sects—I do not mention them; but, on the whole, no nation can treat the house of God more rationally than we ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... rescue might actually be at hand acted as a tonic upon me, imparting renewed life and hope, and clearing away the more than half-delirious fancies that had clouded and bemuddled my brain; thus enabling me once more to think and act rationally. I pulled myself resolutely together, collected my wandering wits, and peered long and anxiously at the shadowy shape that had, as it were, crystallised out of the surrounding darkness; then I looked away ...
— The Castaways • Harry Collingwood
... and of social arrangements. Plato's starting point is that the organization of society depends ultimately upon knowledge of the end of existence. If we do not know its end, we shall be at the mercy of accident and caprice. Unless we know the end, the good, we shall have no criterion for rationally deciding what the possibilities are which should be promoted, nor how social arrangements are to be ordered. We shall have no conception of the proper limits and distribution of activities—what he called justice—as a ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey
... ornament were to be taken away suddenly, it might give a temporary check to industry, and seem to conflict with the principal of a division of labor. But this cannot happen, except it were by miraculous agency. The utmost that can be rationally expected at present by the most sanguine, would be, that professing Christians should exclude it; nor could they, as a body, be expected to do it at once. One here, and another there, would renounce, as wrong, what he had been accustomed to think ...
— The Young Woman's Guide • William A. Alcott
... one doubts the fact. Further, no geologist has ever learned by direct observation that these various sedimentary formations were deposited in a certain order; yet all are agreed as to this order. This is because the nature and origin of these rocks cannot be rationally understood unless we assume that they were so deposited. These hypotheses are universally received as safe and indispensable "geological theories," because they alone give a rational explanation ...
— The Evolution of Man, V.2 • Ernst Haeckel
... three days before, was more surprised than myself at the stream of stragglers which we met. The moral condition of the men was the most singular I ever witnessed. There was no panic, no running, jostling, wild fear. They rode along quietly, talked rationally, seemed utterly free from any lively and immediate apprehension, but "just couldn't be made to fight," and yet quiet and "serene" as seemed to be their timidity, it made some of them go clear off, swim unfordable streams, and stay ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... me, I do assure you, of our native atmosphere at Coolspring, Mass., is more than I can tell, with a hard steel pen on a leaf of flimsy paper. You have heard the saying, 'When a good American dies, he goes to Paris'. Maybe, sometimes, he's smart enough to discount his own death, and rationally enjoy the future time in the present. This you see is a poetic light. But, mercy be praised, the moral of my residence in Paris is plain:—If I can't go to Amelius, Amelius must come to me. Note the address Grand Hotel; and pack up, like a good boy, ...
— The Fallen Leaves • Wilkie Collins
... the princess would have said or done some extravagant thing, and was not a little disappointed when he heard her talk so calmly and rationally; for he then concluded that her disease was nothing but a violent and deep-rooted passion. He therefore threw himself at his majesty's feet, and said, "After what I have heard and observed, sir, it will be to no purpose for me to think of curing the princess, since I have ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... is a matter which, as well as sleep, food and clothing, belongs to education; and if the girl does not enjoy walking—nay, if she does not demand it with as sharp an appetite as she has for her food and sleep, it is generally because she has not been properly and rationally educated. ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett
... glory. But this, you are sensible, can never be the case if you remain in a state of nature. Therefore, improve the present and future moments to the best of purposes, as knowing the time will soon be upon you when you will wish that in living you had lived right, and acted rationally ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... pieces by women in revenge for his black pictures of the sex: a still more improbable conjecture, and probably borrowed from the fate of Orpheus; but which still serves to show how little kindness he was thought to deserve from the women; while others more rationally concluded that his encountering the dogs and their attacking him, was purely an accidental circumstance; and that having in the abstraction and absence of mind, attendant upon very profound meditation, ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol. I. No. 3. March 1810 • Various
... thoughts and feelings which their writers intended to express. The first object to be sought in the study of these poems is the perception of those characteristic excellences which have made them universally admired and placed them among the classics of our language. To accomplish this object rationally and successfully, it is best to begin with those productions which are nearest to us in point of time and which are more in harmony with our own thoughts, and therefore easiest to understand and enjoy. An attempt to pursue these studies in chronological order, ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... was spent rather more rationally. Lord Rotherwood met with a book of Irish Tales, with which he became so engrossed that he did not like to leave it when Emily and Claude were ready to ride to Devereux Castle with him. When there he was equally eager and vehement ...
— Scenes and Characters • Charlotte M. Yonge
... should he do? what could he do but hide the truth with sleepless vigilance? He could not become his brother's rival. In the eyes of Amy and all the family Burt was her acknowledged suitor, who, having been brought to reason, was acting most rationally and honorably. Whether Amy was learning to love him or not made no difference. If she, growing conscious of her womanhood, was turning her thoughts to Burt as the one who had first sought her, and who was ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... shame. But the deuce of it is, my dear fellow, that you write such a very good letter that I am ashamed to exhibit myself before my junior (which you are, after all) in the light of the dreary idiot I feel. Understand that there will be nothing funny in the following pages. If I can manage to be rationally coherent, I shall be ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and elegance, he may proceed, in his chariot, through the streets of Rome; and that the sumptuousness of the Imperial table will not equal the profuse and delicate entertainments provided by the taste, and at the expense, of the Roman pontiffs. How much more rationally (continues the honest Pagan) would those pontiffs consult their true happiness, if, instead of alleging the greatness of the city as an excuse for their manners, they would imitate the exemplary life of some provincial bishops, whose temperance and sobriety, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... self, able to move about within the circle of the objective universe, the soul is able to visualize itself pictorially and imaginatively, although not rationally or logically. These two revelations of the situation are simultaneously disclosed; and although the first-named of them—the "a priori unity of apperception"—might seem to claim, on the strength of this "a priori" a precedence over the second, it has no real right to make such a claim. The ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys
... claim for them some distinction in a work on Demonology. The pursuers of exact science to its coy retreats, were sure to be the first to discover that the most remarkable phenomena in Nature are regulated by certain fixed laws, and cannot rationally be referred to supernatural agency, the sufficing cause to which superstition attributes all that is beyond her own narrow power of explanation. Each advance in natural knowledge teaches us that it is the pleasure of the Creator to govern the world by the laws ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... God; the Author of all life, power, wisdom, genius, in every human being, whether they use to good, or abuse to ill, His divine gifts; the Author, too, of all natural beauty, from the sun over our heads to the flower beneath our feet? Think of that steadily, accurately, rationally. Think of who Christ is, and what Christ is—and then think what His personal influence must be—quite infinite, boundless, miraculous. So that the very blessedness of heaven will not be merely the sight of our Lord; it will be the being made holy, and kept holy, by that sight. ...
— All Saints' Day and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... a sensible being; arises from an impression—though parties won't own it, even to themselves—that what is buried is the actual individual, the man himself. The effect of thinking seriously, and at the same time rationally, will be to destroy this notion, and with it put an end to all the splendor and magnificence of funerals, arising from it. Moreover, religious parties, being particular as to their moral conduct, would naturally consider it wrong and ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Vol. I. No. 3, July 15, 1850 • Various
... next day, upwards of four thousand citizens of Boston assembled at Faneuil Hall; and, in a message to the lieutenant governor, stated it to be "the unanimous opinion of the meeting, that the inhabitants and soldiers can no longer live together in safety; that nothing can rationally be expected to restore the peace of the town, and prevent farther blood and carnage, but the immediate removal of the troops; and they therefore most fervently prayed his honour that his power and influence might be ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 1 (of 5) • John Marshall
... be attributed not only the origination of matter, but all its future developments. When I speak of matter, it must be understood that I mean force; for "if matter were not force, and immediately known as force, it could not be known at all, could not be rationally inferred. The operation of force could furnish no evidence of the existence of forceless matter. If force is not matter, then force can exist and operate without matter; its existence and operation are ...
— Was Man Created? • Henry A. Mott
... Dockers' Union objects to the appearance of new hands at the dock gates, that is for fear the newcomers will enter into unfriendly competition with them. But no Colony, not even the Protectionist and Trade Unionists who govern Victoria, could rationally object to the introduction of trained Colonists planted out upon the land. They would see that these men would become a source of wealth, simply because they would at once become producers as well as consumers, and instead of cutting down wages they would ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... There could be no mistaking that ancient garment. Yet, I wondered what she was doing; and, remembering her condition of mind, on the previous day, I felt that it might be best to follow, quietly—taking care not to alarm her—and see what she was going to do. If she behaved rationally, well and good; if not, I should have to take steps to restrain her. I could run no unnecessary risks, under the danger that ...
— The House on the Borderland • William Hope Hodgson
... engineer, and even actors and architects, may without disgrace follow the bent of human nature, and endeavour to fill their bellies and clothe their backs, and also those of their wives and children, as comfortably as they can by the exercise of their abilities and their crafts. They may be as rationally realistic, as may the butchers and the bakers; but the artist and the author forget the high glories of their calling if they condescend to make a money return a first object. They who preach this doctrine will be much offended by my theory, and by ...
— Autobiography of Anthony Trollope • Anthony Trollope
... Nation and leave behind some dregs, some refuse, in the shape of a king, nobility and gentry, idle, unproductive, acquainted mainly with the arts of wasting and destroying, and of no sort of use or value in any rationally constructed world. And yet, by ingenious contrivance, this gilded minority, instead of being in the tail of the procession where it belonged, was marching head up and banners flying, at the other end of it; had elected itself to be the Nation, and these ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... men were likely to ride out of their way to see him. And now that his mind worked rationally, he had no fear of Buck Olney's vengeful return. Buck Olney, he guessed shrewdly, was extremely busy just now, putting as many miles as possible between himself and that part of Idaho. Unless Billy Louise should come or send for him, he would in all probability ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower
... All-of-us. In practice—that is, when it exercises will or adopts a line of action—it is only a little group of men chosen in a very haphazard way by the majority of us to perform certain services for all of us. The majority do not go about their selection very rationally, and they are almost always disappointed by the results of their own operation. Hence "the State," instead of offering resources of wisdom, right reason, and pure moral sense beyond what the average of us possess, generally ...
— What Social Classes Owe to Each Other • William Graham Sumner
... I had been assiduous in visiting the prisoners, Sabbaths and other days, and endeavoring to influence them in the right. But now that the meetings had commenced, we could rationally look for a greater success to ...
— The Prison Chaplaincy, And Its Experiences • Hosea Quinby
... said this was stern enough, and so was her countenance. She could not forbid the uncle to speak his mind to his niece, but she especially disliked the idea of any interference with her daughter. The squire got up and walked about the room, trying to compose himself that he might answer her rationally, but ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... as many months. Forget all that awhile; and put yourselves in Salvian's place, the gentleman of Gaul, while Franks and Goths, Burgunds and Vandals were sweeping, wave after wave, over that lovely land; and judge him rationally, and talk as little as possible of his superstition, and as much as possible of his human feeling, prudence, self-control, and common sense. Believe me, neither celibacy, nor any other seemingly unnatural superstition would ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... of infusing a robust humanity into her characters that makes the distinctive feature of Ada Cambridge's best novels. In each, whatever the quality of the plot, there are always two or three personages who talk and act as real men and women do—now rationally or in obedience to custom, now passionately or with that perversity which, as the author once describes it, 'is like a natural law, independent of other laws, the only one that persistently defies ...
— Australian Writers • Desmond Byrne
... and therefore may in my judgement bee safely put in practise. Thus then you plainly see that all medicines, and especially tobacco, being rightly and rationally used, is a noble medicine and contrariwise not in his due time with other circumstances considered, it doth no more than a nobleman's shooe doth in healing the ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... preeminently to the period of childhood and which are supposed to be the result of bacterial contagion, although, curiously, the specific bacteria concerned in any one of these four diseases has not been detected. They may be rationally grouped together for two reasons. First, because of their attacking, in the majority of cases, children under the age of fifteen years, and second, because the first stages of these diseases are very similar, so that the recognition of them is not easy except for the practiced physician. ...
— Rural Hygiene • Henry N. Ogden
... middle) piece fortunately requires no allowances, and suffers from no drawbacks. "Literature and Science" is an apology for a liberal education, and for a rationally ordered hierarchy of human study, which it would be almost impossible to improve, and respecting which it is difficult to think that it can ever grow obsolete. Not only was Mr Arnold here on his own ground, but he was fighting for his true mistress, ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury |
