"Undoubting" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that this was an inconsistency in utilitarian doctrine, implying that they, too, could make a priori first principles when they wanted them. It has become a sort of orthodox dogma with radicals, who do not always trouble themselves about a philosophical basis, and is applied with undoubting confidence to many practical political problems. "One man, one vote" is not simply the formulation of a demand, but seems to intimate a logical ground for the demand. If, in politics, one man is rightfully entitled to one vote, is it not also true that, in economics, one man should ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen
... inspiration of poets and sculptors; but it is the amusement of the day, the terror of the night, the fertile source of wild superstitions. It turns the clouds into gigantic shapes, and the winds into doleful voices. The belief which springs from it is more absolute and undoubting than any which can be derived from evidence. It resembles the faith which we repose in our own sensations. Thus, the Arab, when covered with wounds, saw nothing but the dark eyes and the green kerchief of a beckoning Houri. The Northern warrior laughed in the pangs of ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... her youth those who saw visions usually died or met with calamity. That their visions were, as a rule, gruesome and included pale and ghastly faces and voices hollow with portent was now a supporting recollection. "He was not dead. He was not an angel. He was Donal," Robin had said in her undoubting voice. And she had stood the test—that real test of earthly egg and buttered toast. Dowie was a sensible and experienced creature and had been prepared before the doctor's suggestion to lose no advantage. If the child began to sleep and eat her food, and ...
— Robin • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... facts and respect for them which Lyell shows in spelling out terrestrial history, or Herschel in tracing that of the solar system. Observe how he relates the plays of a child,—with what grave, imperial respect, with what undoubting, reverential minuteness! He does not say, "Bear with me, ladies and gentlemen; I will come to something of importance soon." This is important,—the formation of suns ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... hospital, and with the sick and wounded, who received her ministrations and care. Small in stature, it was wonderful how much labor she was able to accomplish, and how she was sustained by a soul full of noble purposes and undoubting faith. ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... business and its accumulated wealth, if he had not insisted on joining the ministry. But he threw up all to preach the Gospel. Dale thought of the nature of the faith that would make a man go and do a thing like that. It must be unquestioning, undoubting; a ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... and your heart is perfect, since otherwise you would not have dealt with me as you have done. Still, it seems that you lack one thing—undoubting faith in the goodness of the gods. Though, surely," he added in a slow voice, "those who have passed yonder lion-haunted forest without hurt should not lack faith. Say, now, how came ...
— Morning Star • H. Rider Haggard
... undoubting confidence of a future state. Being asked by his friend Mr. Hooke, a papist, whether he would not die like his father and mother, and whether a priest should not be called; he answered, "I do not think it essential, but it will be very ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... seem, When thou, for all thy gold, so common art! Thou teachest me to deem More sacredly of every human heart, Since each reflects in joy its scanty gleam Of heaven, and could some wondrous secret show, Did we but pay the love we owe, And with a child's undoubting wisdom look On all these living pages ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... heart to be able to do so much for the cottagers. They did not, perhaps, stand so much in awe of her as they ought to have done, but they brought all their troubles to her with the most perfect and undoubting confidence. ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... she have meant about that fellow Finn?" he said to himself. "They cannot both have been murdered." He went to his club, and there he soon learned the truth. The information was given to him with clear and undoubting words. Phineas Finn and Mr. Bonteen had quarrelled at The Universe. Mr. Bonteen, as far as words went, had got the best of his adversary. This had taken place in the presence of the Prince, who had expressed himself as greatly annoyed by Mr. Finn's conduct. And afterwards ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... as they constantly did with debt, with drink, with all sorts of bad behaviour, they got upon their knees and cried "Peccavi" with a most sonorous orthodoxy. Yes; poor Harry Fielding and poor Dick Steele were trusty and undoubting Church of England men; they abhorred Popery, Atheism, and wooden shoes, and idolatries in general; and hiccupped ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... for courage to say so, when the sound of the great clock at Mansfield Park, striking three, made her feel that she had really been much longer absent than usual, and brought the previous self-inquiry of whether she should take leave or not just then, and how, to a very speedy issue. With undoubting decision she directly began her adieus; and Edmund began at the same time to recollect that his mother had been inquiring for her, and that he had walked down to the Parsonage on purpose to ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... That He, who has done this, should not be sincere is impossible. St. Paul, therefore, triumphantly asks what none can answer: "He, that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?" Trust, then, His word with undoubting confidence; take His hand with humble gratitude, and with all thy heart obey His voice, which you will everywhere hear, saying, "this is the way, walk ye therein." In sickness and in health, by ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 3 - Massillon to Mason • Grenville Kleiser
... for more than a year. It was a very happy year. The brothers had waited long for it. They listened from morning until night to his boastful little stories with undoubting faith and pleasure. As for their hero, he felt that he had made his mark: he had his circle of admirers and limitless applause: what could life give ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... were I to keep aloof and shun The conflict, cowardlike. Not thus my heart Prompts me, for greatly have I learned to dare And strike among the foremost sons of Troy, Upholding my great father's fame and mine; Yet well in my undoubting mind I know The day shall come in which our sacred Troy, And Priam, and the people over whom Spear-bearing Priam rules, ...
— The Story of Troy • Michael Clarke
... duty's claim, No cause to dread the people's blame. Can one as brave as thou consent To use a coward's argument? The glory of the Warrior race With craven speech his lips debase? Can one like thee so falsely speak, Exalting Fate, confessed so weak? Canst thou, undoubting still restrain? Suspicions of those sinful twain? Canst thou, most duteous, fail to know Their hearts are set on duty's show? They with deceit have set their trains, And now the fruit rewards their pains. Had they not long ago agreed, O Rama, on this treacherous deed, That ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... thou, for all thy gold, so common art! Thou teachest me to deem 75 More sacredly of every human heart, Since each reflects in joy its scanty gleam Of Heaven, and could some wondrous secret show, Did we but pay the love we owe, And with a child's undoubting wisdom look 80 On all these living ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... rights; when they still held arms in their hands, and the consciousness of unity had awakened an enthusiastic reliance on their own strength; when by past success, by the promises of foreign assistance, and by visionary expectations of the future, their courage had been raised to an undoubting confidence. Disregarding the rights already conferred on Ferdinand, the Estates declared the throne vacant, and their right of election entirely unfettered. All hopes of their peaceful submission were at an end, and if Ferdinand wished still to wear the crown of Bohemia, he must choose between purchasing ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... his mind. How easy and facile these girlish loves and fancies were! Ursula knew nothing of this stranger, and yet so free were the girl's thoughts, so open her heart to receive impressions, that on so short knowledge she had received the other into it with undoubting confidence and trust. He did not come forward himself to say good-bye, but he perceived that Reginald followed downstairs, and took his hat from the table, to accompany Phoebe home. As they closed the outer door behind them, the ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... as she could judge of her own feelings at this moment, in the absolute absence of any previous accurate thought on the subject, she fancied that a real, undoubted, undoubting, trustworthy engagement with Ralph Newton would make her the happiest girl in England. She had never told herself that she was in love with him; she had never flattered herself that he was in love ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... have loved this garden. But instead of water from the white marble fountain, he would have desired a cup of wine to drink beneath the boughs of the sheltering trees. And he could not have joined without doubt or fear in the fervent devotions of the undoubting men, who came here to steep their wills in the great will that flowed about them like the ocean about little ...
— The Spell of Egypt • Robert Hichens
... bound together the brotherhoods of the mountain and the desert, and had woven chains of pitying or aspiring communion between this world and the unfathomable beneath and above; and, more than these, the spirits of all the innumerable, undoubting, dead, beckoning to the one way by which they had been content to follow the things that belonged unto their peace;—these all stood on the other side: and the choice must have been a bitter one, even at the best; but it was rendered tenfold more bitter by the natural, ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin
... a rigid discipline of manners and faith, a system of church government, a form of church worship, stripped, as they held, of the last remnant of the superstitions of the past. Calvin himself with his austere and frugal life, his enormous industry, his power of government, his quick decision, his undoubting self-confidence, his unswerving will, remained for three-and-twenty years till his death in 1564 supreme over Protestant opinion. His influence told heavily on England. From the hour of Cromwell's fall the sympathies of the English reformers ...
— History of the English People - Volume 4 (of 8) • John Richard Green
... vehemence with which it is sometimes opposed; the frenzy with which men have been brought to contend for opinions and ceremonies, of which they knew neither the proof, the meaning, nor the original: lastly, the equal and undoubting confidence with which we hear the doctrines of Christ or of Confucius, the law of Moses or of Mahomet, the Bible, the Koran, or the Shaster, maintained or anathematized, taught or abjured, revered or derided, according as we live on ...
— Golden Steps to Respectability, Usefulness and Happiness • John Mather Austin
... never he mistakes The wildest signs the doctor makes Prescribing drugs. Brown paper, string, He will not use for any thing, But all in neat white parcels packs And sticks them up with sealing-wax. Miss Thompson bowed and blushed, and then Undoubting bought of Mr. Wren, Being free from modern scepticism, A bottle for her rheumatism; Also some peppermints to take In case of wind; an oval cake Of scented soap; a penny square Of pungent naphthaline to scare The moth. And after Wren had wrapped And sealed the lot, ...
— Georgian Poetry 1920-22 • Various
... the writer's mind, he will not have distinguished the two elements in himself; he will be profane when he fancies himself only arguing for truth; he will be only arguing for truth, where he seems to the respectable undoubting to be profane. And in the meanwhile, whether the respectable understand him or not, the young and the inquiring, much more the distempered, who would be glad to throw off moral law, will sympathise with him often more than he sympathises ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... sunrise or sunset or at noon, because they might be confounded with the infidels who worshipped the sun? Yet it gave him a fresh thrill each morning to watch these desert worshippers prostrate themselves in undoubting faith before their omnipotent God. In the untrodden desert, with its mingling of sky and sand, their perfect trust and faith in Allah seemed a convincing and evident belief. At such times he forgot that these same men were the children of Superstition ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... generation are peculiarly feeble and decayed; and would even perhaps be willing to exchange the restless immaturity of our self-consciousness, and the promise of its long throe-pangs, for the unawakened undoubting simplicity of the world's childhood; of the times in which there was all the evil and horror of our day, only with the difference that conscience had not arisen to try and condemn it. In these longings, if they are Teufelsdrockh's, ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... she scarcely seemed to touch the ground as she walked. Her reception by the king, the queen, and the whole court was every thing that could be desired. The duchess and her daughter that night placed their heads upon their pillows with the undoubting conviction that Marguerite was to be the Queen of France. The king ordered his suite to be ready, in their gala dresses, to attend him on the morrow to the apartments ...
— Louis XIV., Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... and at the time of a person's birth, he would with undoubting confidence predict all the leading events of his future life, and sometimes (if he knew anything of his personal history) even venture to declare the past. The caution with which he usually touched the second subject, formed a striking contrast ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... varied perils, pains, and woes: His steed now flounders in the brake, Now sinks his barge upon the lake; Now leader of a broken host, His standard falls, his honor's lost. Then,—from my couch may heavenly might Chase that worst phantom of the night!— Again returned the scenes of youth, Of confident, undoubting truth; Again his soul he interchanged With friends whose hearts were long estranged. They come, in dim procession led, The cold, the faithless, and the dead; As warm each hand, each brow as gay, As if they parted yesterday. And doubt distracts him at the view,— O were his senses ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... not an undoubting belief, you may carve out your sentences as curiously as you will; deliver them with the voice of music, and yet be nothing but an entertainer. Speaking as one of the "men of the street," as one of the millions, ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... commanded his esteem as much as it engaged his generosity. She had made a no less open avowal of her faults to him. She had acknowledged the imperfections of her temper (the sorest of her troubles) both at the outset of their engagement, and often since. At first, the confession was made in an undoubting confidence that she should be reasonable, and amiable, and serene henceforth for ever, while she had him by her side. Subsequent experience had moderated this confidence into a hope that, by his example, and under his guidance, she should be enabled to surmount her failings. He shared this ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... futurity, but gave themselves no concern about the eternity which is past. But Plato considered the soul as having already eternally existed, the present life being only a moment in our career; he looked forward with an undoubting faith to the changes through which we must hereafter pass. As sparks issue forth from a flame, so doubtless to his imagination did the soul of man issue forth from the soul of the world. Innate ideas and the sentiment of pre-existence indicate our past life. By the latter is ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... obtained not by the might of man, but by the grace of God, and that not our will or desire, but only the mercy of the Most High, can bestow it upon us. For this reason you must first of all cleanse your heart, lift it up to Him alone, and ask of Him this gift in true, earnest and undoubting prayer. He alone can give and bestow it."(1) Whilst another alchemist declares: "I am firmly persuaded that any unbeliever who got truly to know this Art, would straightway confess the truth of our Blessed Religion, and believe in the Trinity and in ...
— Bygone Beliefs • H. Stanley Redgrove
... prayer oblique, relative, transitory, subordinate, offered to saints on the other,) would have appeared to me the ingenious and finely-drawn inventions of an advocate, not such a sound process of Christian simplicity as the mind could rest upon, with an undoubting persuasion that all ...
— Primitive Christian Worship • James Endell Tyler
... rain. Language often receives its significance and power from the person who uses it. Unless permeated by the higher faculties of the mind, unless it be not the clothing, but the 'incarnation of thought,' it is quite an humble power. There are some writers who repose undoubting confidence in words. If their minds be filled with the epithets of poetry, they fondly deem that they have clutched its essence. In a piece of inferior verse, we often observe a great array of expressions ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... weapons. But then, he concludes: "These crude and smoke-stained plans I have hastily brought together for the sake of certain violent and dishonest persons, who, beyond all propriety and in the teeth of the Federal Compact, threaten the good city of Zurich with war. Still, I have an undoubting hope that Almighty God will not let the pious people of the Confederacy suffer for the treachery of a few, nor permit us thus to sit in judgment on each other. I have prayed from the bottom of my heart, that he will defend his city in some other ...
— The Life and Times of Ulric Zwingli • Johann Hottinger
... The half-wrecked mariner, his compass lost, Fixes his steady gaze, And steers, undoubting, to the friendly coast; And they who stray in perilous wastes, by night, Are glad when thou dost shine to guide ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant
... he paused a moment and waited, his small head turned sideways, his big, round, dew-bright black eye roguishly attentive. Then with more swelling of the throat he trilled and rippled gayly anew, undisturbed and undoubting, but with a trifle of insistence. Then he listened, tried again two or three times, with brave chirps and exultant little roulades. "Here am I, the bright-breasted, the liquid-eyed, the slender-legged, the joyous ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... for such a purpose. If this little biography have any value, it is probably of another kind—as the narrative of one who knew the individual of whom he treats, at a period of life when character could be read with undoubting accuracy, and who, consequently, in judging of the motives of his subsequent conduct, has an advantage over much more competent observers, whose knowledge of the man may have commenced at a later date. Nor can it be considered improper (at least, the author will never feel it so, although ...
— Sketches and Studies • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... not have been written by a Trinitarian or a Calvinist; but theological partisanship is even slower than secular partisanship to see what it does not choose to see; and Milton's Arianism was not generally admitted until it was here avouched under his own hand. The general principle of the book is undoubting reliance on the authority of Scripture, with which such an acquaintance is manifested as could only have been gained by years of intense study. It is true that the doctrine of the inward light as the interpreter of Scripture is asserted with equal conviction; but ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett
... so long opposed, nor the magnificent result which had at length attended her exertions. The forces destined for the invasion, and which were denominated by anticipation the army of England, had been encamped around the town. The characteristic arrogance—the undoubting anticipation of victory—the utter thoughtlessness—the unsinking vivacity of the French soldiery, were then at the highest pitch. Some little idea of the gay and light-hearted sentiments with which they contemplated the invasion ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... mankind, some of the greatest errors of his life arose from too rash a confidence in the honour and integrity of others. When these errors took place, they seem to have arisen from an over refined system of policy, which induced Louis to assume the appearance of undoubting confidence in those whom it was his object to overreach; for, in his general conduct, he was as jealous and suspicious as any ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... you ceased to wile the victim at your feet, There was very little silk about the fetter, And 'twere flattery to say your sway was sweet: Nay, you made the light and airy shrine of beauty A centre for the most exacting duty, And the fealty of the family undoubting Met with flouting, As a tribute which was nothing but your due, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., February 7, 1891 • Various
... stove in the long winter nights; it is as silly as possible, but it comforts them as they carry faggots over the frozen canals or wear their eyes blind over the squares of lace; and it has in it the supreme pathos of a perfect confidence, of an utter childlike and undoubting trust. ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... the victim. No two characters can be in certain respects more strongly contrasted, than the Mr. Falkland of a date prior and subsequent to these events. Hitherto he had been attended by a fortune perpetually prosperous. His mind was sanguine; full of that undoubting confidence in its own powers which prosperity is qualified to produce. Though the habits of his life were those of a serious and sublime visionary they were nevertheless full of cheerfulness and tranquillity. But from this moment, his ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... be right, my dear child," said Mr. Wardour, holding her close, so that she felt his deep love, though it was not an undoubting welcome. "I will hear all about it when you have rested, and then I may know what is best to ...
— Countess Kate • Charlotte M. Yonge
... might have no excuse whatever for not praying. But all depends upon this, that we learn also to say Amen, that is, that we do not doubt that our prayer is surely heard and [what we pray] shall be done. For this is nothing else than the word of undoubting faith, which does not pray at a venture, but knows that God does not lie to him, since He has promised to grant it. Therefore, where there is no such faith, there cannot be true prayer ...
— The Large Catechism by Dr. Martin Luther
... Greenacres and such like were walking about with the ploughboys in the park. It was a great point gained by Mrs Lookaloft, and it might be fairly expected that from this time forward the tradesmen of Barchester would, with undoubting pens, address her husband and T. ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... it bears similitude in many respects to some of the schools of Germany. In the analysis offered of the human faculties, it has much akin to Kant: in the deep conviction that the highest truth is revealed to a faculty of faith, and in the undoubting belief in our own intuitions and the conviction of their reality, it resembles Jacobi and Schelling: in regarding the human reason to be the impersonal reason, the divinity in man, it resembles Schelling or Cousin. But it also has an element akin to the ancient Neo-Platonic philosophy of Alexandria.(979) ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... his contemporaries than the confidence with which he appealed to the higher sentiments of mankind, the scorn with which he turned from a corruption which had till then been the great engine of politics, the undoubting faith which he felt in himself, in the grandeur of his aims, and in his power to carry them out. "I know that I can save the country," he said to the Duke of Devonshire on his entry into the Ministry, "and I know no other man can." The groundwork of Pitt's character ...
— History of the English People, Volume VII (of 8) - The Revolution, 1683-1760; Modern England, 1760-1767 • John Richard Green
... charge of necromancy. It is further remarked, that Gregory was deep in the pretended science of judicial astrology; and this, without its being necessary to have recourse to the solution of diabolical aid, may sufficiently account for the undoubting certainty with which he counted ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... change from twelve years to seven. 'I spoke a few sentences,' Mr. Gladstone enters in his diary, 'in much confusion: for I could not easily recover from the sensation caused by the sudden overthrow of an entire and undoubting alliance.' ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... don't,' said the cook, in firm, undoubting tones. 'I've always wanted to be the Queen, God bless her! and I always thought what a good one I should make; and now I'm going to. IF it's only in a dream, it's well worth while. And I don't go back to that nasty underground kitchen, and me blamed for everything; that I don't, not ...
— The Phoenix and the Carpet • E. Nesbit
... manner of unravelling the mysteries and searching into the causes of Law with a spirit which almost lent poetry to the subject. When Mr. Dove would do so, Mr. Camperdown would not quite understand the words spoken, but he would listen to them with an undoubting reverence. And he did understand them in part, and was conscious of an infusion of a certain amount of poetic spirit into his own bosom. He would think of these speeches afterwards, and would entertain high but somewhat ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... cumulative weight to the considerations presented by him as persuasive to the measure, and in recommending it to your deliberations I am happy to have the influence of this high authority in aid of the undoubting convictions of ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... glanced at Little Bobtail, to discover any evidences of guilt or confusion in his face. Certainly he was deeply interested, and even anxious; but, being young and inexperienced, he had an undoubting confidence in the ultimate triumph ...
— Little Bobtail - or The Wreck of the Penobscot. • Oliver Optic
... nature of Tressilian was instantly turned from consideration of anything personal to himself, and centred at once upon Amy's welfare. He had by no means undoubting confidence in the fluctuating resolutions of Leicester, whose mind seemed to him agitated beyond the government of calm reason; neither did he, notwithstanding the assurances he had received, think Amy safe in the hands of his dependants. ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... able and willing to guide all men in all things, so long as he is obeyed as autocrat should be obeyed,—with undoubting submission: only let not ungrateful ministers seek other colleagues than those whom Tom Towers may approve; let church and state, law and physic, commerce and agriculture, the arts of war, and the arts of peace, all listen and ...
— The Warden • Anthony Trollope
... nights; it is as silly as possible, but it comforts them as they carry fagots over the frozen canals or wear their eyes blind over the squares of lace; and it has in it the supreme pathos of any perfect confidence, of any utterly childlike and undoubting trust. ...
— Bebee • Ouida
... reveries by day and her dreams by night. Blended with these aspirations were recollections of the miraculous interpositions of Heaven in favour of the oppressed, which she had learned from the legends of her Church. Her faith was undoubting; her prayers were fervent. "She feared no danger, for she felt no sin;" and at length she believed herself to have received the supernatural inspiration ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... who were always ready to spin some of their longest yarns for our edification, though older people who went down there for the purpose found no little difficulty in getting anything out of them. This was not surprising. The old sailors found in us attentive and undoubting listeners. We never thought of even questioning them to let them suspect that we had not the most perfect reliance on what they said, which older people were apt to do, I observed, for the purpose of gaining more ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... original as profound, calling upon the discoverer to press ever onward, for a new world will surely arise for him, inasmuch as whatever is promised by Genius is always fulfilled by Nature. To cross the seas of Life, naught suffices save the bark of Faith. In that bark the undoubting Columbus set sail, and at his journey's end found a new world. Had that world not then existed, God would have created it in the solitude of the Atlantic, if to no other end than to reward the faith and constancy of that great man. America was discovered because Columbus possessed ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... well as know, Edward," said his wife. "God is good. In looking back through all our past life, does not the retrospection lead to this undoubting conclusion? I am sure you will say yes. Has he not, in every case, proved better to us than all our fears?—Why, then, should we distrust him now? In the beautiful language of Cowper, let us say ...
— True Riches - Or, Wealth Without Wings • T.S. Arthur
... Miracles were not displayed in the presence of sceptics to establish scientific truths, When the adulterous generation sought after a sign, the sign was not given; nay, it is even said that in the presence of unbelief our Lord was not able to work miracles. But science has less respect for that undoubting and submissive willingness to believe; and it is quite certain that if we attempt to establish the truth of the New Testament on the principles of Paley, if with Professor Jowett "we interpret the Bible as any other book," the element of miracle which ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... witchcraft, for example, was exploded a hundred and fifty years ago, and the idea of an apparition, in spite of Dr. Johnson's belief, and that of others as wise and stout as he, would be scouted as preposterous in cultivated circles, I believe that there are many places in New England where undoubting faith in both superstitions still prevails, and I know that within a third part of the period above mentioned, very many creditable persons in a certain place in New England accepted the strangest occurrences of both kinds, ...
— Old New England Traits • Anonymous
... disengage himself from this violent prejudice of custom, would find several things received with absolute and undoubting opinion, that have no other support than the hoary head and rivelled face of ancient usage. But the mask taken off, and things being referred to the decision of truth and reason, he will find his judgment ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... church. It is easy to make merry with this piece of simplicity, but a reflecting mind will see the subject in a very different light. A powerful consciousness of the universal validity and the solid permanency of their own manner of being, an undoubting conviction that it has always so been and will ever continue so to be in the world: these feelings of our ancestors were symptoms of a fresh fulness of life; they were the marrow of action in reality as well as in fiction. Their plain and affectionate ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... asked me to marry him." Neither assurance nor bashfulness; newspaper print; aid an undoubting ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... young man by Bianca's rare beauty of face and form, and by the tenderness of her voice, and, perhaps more than all, by the undoubting confidence she reposed in him. Bianca was such a very different sort of girl to cold, unattractive and ...
— The Tragedies of the Medici • Edgcumbe Staley
... Hence are his views broad, impressive, popular; no trivial details, no wire-woven developments, no subtle distinctions and drawing of fine lines about the boundaries of ideas, no speculation, no ingenuity; all is elemental, comprehensive, intense, practical, unqualified, undoubting. It is not of the small things of minor and instrumental politics he comes to speak, or men come to hear. It is not to speak or to hear about permitting an Athenian citizen to change his tribe; about permitting the Roman knights to have jurisdiction ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... the suggestion that God is truly a person" (p. 22). It is here, no doubt, that faith comes in; at all events, you ultimately get over this stumbling-block. "Then suddenly, in a little while, in his own time, God comes. The cardinal experience is an undoubting immediate sense of God. It is the attainment of an absolute certainty that one is not alone in oneself" (p. 23). You have come, in fact, to the gate of Damascus. ...
— God and Mr. Wells - A Critical Examination of 'God the Invisible King' • William Archer
... any man; that the moment he quitted them, and entered into society, "they appeared to him so frigid and unnatural" that he could not get himself to interest himself about them any further; that a dinner with a friend, or a game at backgammon, put them all to flight, and restored him to the undoubting belief of all the maxims which his meditative hours had stripped him of. It was natural, Harrington said; for such scepticism was impossible. He added, however, that, had Hume been honest, he would never have employed ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... was the hour that brought to Richmond the story of Sharpsburg. Flushed with hope, undoubting of triumph, her citizens only listened for the wild cheer that would echo back from conquered Washington. But the sound that reached their ears was the menacing roar from retreating ranks that left near one-third their number stark and ghastly on that ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... which they set about it. They really seemed to imagine that there would be no difficulty whatever in creating a live little girl out of the snow. And, to say the truth, if miracles are ever to be wrought, it will be by putting our hands to the work in precisely such a simple and undoubting frame of mind as that in which Violet and Peony now undertook to perform one, without so much as knowing that it was a miracle. So thought the mother; and thought, likewise, that the new snow, just fallen from ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... has been one among us who, ere he had reached the age at which a priest in Israel would have been entering on his course, dwelt at the Mercy-seat as if it were his home,—preached the certainties of eternal life with an undoubting mind,—and spent his nights and days in ceaseless breathings after holiness, and the salvation of sinners. Hundreds of souls were his reward from the Lord, ere he left us; and in him have we been taught how much one man may do who will only press farther ...
— The Biography of Robert Murray M'Cheyne • Andrew A. Bonar
... something short, determined, and even stern, in the man's manner, not certainly well calculated to conciliate undoubting confidence. ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... fortunes. With these philosophic financiers, this universal medicine made of church mummy is to cure all the evils of the state. These gentlemen, perhaps, do not believe a great deal in the miracles of piety; but it cannot be questioned, that they have an undoubting faith in the prodigies of sacrilege. Is there a debt which presses them?—Issue assignats. Are compensations to be made, or a maintenance decreed to those whom they have robbed of their freehold in their office, or expelled from their profession?—Assignats. Is ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... very like this lately, as "Berlin to Baghdad," if not "Calais to Calcutta"? And even if we had not, would not the sense and the satire of it be delectable? A great deal has been left out: the chapter is, for Rabelais, rather a long one. The momentary doubt of the usually undoubting Picrochole as to what they shall drink in the desert, allayed at once by a beautiful scheme of commissariat camels and elephants,[99] which would have done credit to the most modern A.S.C., is very capital. There is, indeed, an unpleasant ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... Cavalier leading his lady to that same altar and saw the priest bless them in the holy name. Almost he could read the inscriptions upon the tombs which told of generations of country gentlemen who had worshipped at the simple shrine, unquestioning, undoubting. The Roundheads dour, with their pitiless creed, had failed to destroy its fragrant sanctity, which lingered in those foot-worn aisles like the memory of incense, the echo of a monkish prayer. Was it all a great delusion?—or were our fathers wise in ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer
... their Heracles-issued princes Built in strength against the vanquish'd! Another, another sacrifice on this day Ye witness, ye new-built towers! When the white-robed, garland-crowned Monarch Approaches, with undoubting heart, Living, his own sacrifice-block, And stands, shouting for a slaughterous axe; And the stern, destiny-brought Stranger, The inheritor of the realm, Coming swiftly through the jocund Dorians, Drives the axe to its goal. ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... therefore, that wise men, weary of investigation, tormented by uncertainty, longing to believe something, and yet seeing objections to every thing, should submit themselves absolutely to teachers who, with firm and undoubting faith, lay claim to a supernatural commission. Thus we frequently see inquisitive and restless spirits take refuge from their own scepticism in the bosom of a church which pretends to infallibility, and, after questioning the existence of a Deity, bring themselves to worship ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... second place, that our ideas of time are relative, quite as much as our ideas of space; and if the microscope has revealed a world of wonders too minute in point of space to be observed by the naked eye, in whose existence we yet believe with undoubting confidence, we may without greater difficulty believe in the existence of mental acts crowded into so narrow a point of time, so rapid and transitory in their occurrence, as to leave no impression upon ...
— In the School-Room - Chapters in the Philosophy of Education • John S. Hart
... divines in the Anglican Church, publicly asserting on a well known occasion at once his faith and his fears) or lawyers (like Sir Edward Coke and Judge Hale) are found unmistakably recording their undoubting conviction, they were bound, it is plain, the one class by theology, the other by legislation. Credulity of so extraordinary a kind is sufficiently surprising even in theologians; but what is to be thought of the deliberate ...
— The Superstitions of Witchcraft • Howard Williams
... paused to examine the countenances of his scholars. Upon them he read extreme surprise, undoubting belief in the veracity of their teacher, and the dawning gleam of a timid hope that they themselves might become participators in the transcendent discovery he proclaimed. Addressing himself to the latter sentiment—"I am willing," he continued, "to communicate ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... at one and the same time things inconsistent with one another, and so few are those who draw from what they receive as truths, any consequences but those recommended to them by their feelings, that multitudes have held the undoubting belief in an Omnipotent Author of Hell, and have nevertheless identified that being with the best conception they were able to form of perfect goodness. Their worship was not paid to the demon which ...
— Autobiography • John Stuart Mill
... of billets you possess from her, there must be enough to compromise her. Look them well over; select passages, and threaten to do so. Write to her at first in the undoubting tone of a lover who has every claim upon her. Then, if she is silent, remonstrate, alluding to former promises from her; producing proofs of her former regard for you; vowing despair, destruction, revenge, if she prove unfaithful. Frighten her—astonish her by some daring feat, which ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... and in my well-known armour clad, Lead forth the valiant Myrmidons to war, Since the dark cloud of Trojans circles round The ships in force; and on the shingly beach, Pent up in narrow limits, lie the Greeks; And all the city hath pour'd its numbers forth In hope undoubting; for they see no more My helm among them flashing; else in flight Their dead would choke the streams, if but to me Great Agamemnon bore a kindly mind: But round the camp the battle now is wag'd. No more the hands of valiant Diomed, The Greeks protecting, hurl his fiery spear; Nor ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... acquaintances of great value in after-life. It was difficult for the older stump speakers to change the addresses they had been delivering for years, so that the young orators, with their fresh enthusiasm, their intense earnestness and undoubting faith, were more popular with the audiences, who were keenly alive to the issues raised then ...
— My Memories of Eighty Years • Chauncey M. Depew
... story," said Harry, pressing upon him, and opening very wide blue eyes, in which undoubting faith shone as in a mirror; "and let it be something strange, ...
— Oldtown Fireside Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... narrow deductive minds completely captive. Burke poured merited scorn on the application of geometry to politics and algebraic formulas to government, but then it was just this seeming demonstration, this measured accuracy, that filled Rousseau's disciples with a supreme and undoubting confidence which leaves the modern student of these schemes in amazement unspeakable. The thinness of Robespierre's ideas on government ceases to astonish us, when we remember that he had not trained himself ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... I am dumb with doubt; yet, 'tis not doubt, but worse: I doubt my doubt. Oh, ye all-wise spirits in the air, how can ye witness all this woe, and give no sign? Would, would that mine were a settled doubt, like that wild boy's, who without faith, seems full of it. The undoubting doubter believes the most. Oh! that I were he. Methinks that daring boy hath Alma in him, struggling to be free. But those pilgrims: that trusting girl.—What, if they saw me as I am? Peace, peace, my soul; ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... unfair dealing, though the charge could not be regarded as fully proved against him. Mr. Adams, while blaming himself for carelessness in not having more closely examined original documents, yet felt "scarce a doubt" that Onis "did intend by artifice to cover the grants while we were under the undoubting impression they were annulled;" and he said to M. de Neuville, concerning this dark transaction, that "it was not the ingenious device of a public minister, but 'une fourberie de Scapin.'" Before long the rumor got abroad in the public prints in the natural shape of a "malignant distortion," ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse
... Bettine has been refuted by irrefragable proof. To say that he was wanting in love, heartless, cold, is ridiculously false. Yet the charge is constantly reiterated in the face of facts,—reiterated with undoubting assurance and a certain complacency which seems to say, "Thank God! we are not as this man was." There is a satisfaction which some people feel in spotting their man,—Burns drank; Coleridge took opium; Byron was ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... authoritative voice with that of the living, actual present in testimony of the truth of this great Catholic dogma. The Saints, the Fathers, the Doctors of the Church in the ages of antiquity, and the prelates and priests of our own day all speak the same language of undoubting faith, of solemn conviction regarding Purgatory,—make the same earnest and eloquent appeal to the faithful on behalf of the dear suffering souls. Even the heathen nations and tribes of both hemispheres are brought forward as witnesses ...
— Purgatory • Mary Anne Madden Sadlier
... face apparent discrepancies with revelation, rather than leave them to be discovered afterwards as if they had been timidly kept out of sight. And whether Hugh Miller's theory be right or wrong, his grand fervid language leaves the conviction that undoubting confidence in revelation consists with the clearest and ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... relations continue indefinitely as they were. But I was not able to regard the hostility of my family without impatience that added a spice of martyrdom to my interviews with him. The very fact that others thought ill made it all the more incumbent upon me to be steadfast and undoubting. ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... with as many I's as an Argus pheasant; and, without exacting upon good-nature by troublesome contributions, will hazard a few couplets concerning Blackstone's cast-off mistress, the Law. One word more though: undoubting of thine amiability, friend that hast walked with me hitherto in peace, I will be tame as a purring cat, and sheathe my talons; therefore are you still unteased by divers sly speeches and sarcastic hints, of and concerning ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... this Priesthood—a power immensely greater in Ireland than in Italy, for there the Priests are generally regarded as the allies of the tyrant and plundering class, while here they are doubly beloved as its enemies and its victims—I feel an undoubting conviction that simply an earnest determination of the Catholic Hierarchy of Ireland that every Catholic child in the country shall receive a good education would secure its own fulfilment within five years, and thenceforth for ever. Let but one generation be well educated, ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... of having the witness of men who, by their prudent suspension of judgment, betrayed their lurking unbelief, we have the testimony of men who, by their surrender of themselves, soul and body, evinced their undoubting faith in a matter in which there could be really no ...
— The Lost Gospel and Its Contents - Or, The Author of "Supernatural Religion" Refuted by Himself • Michael F. Sadler
... but, I think, unjustly. Perhaps the reason is that the quality of poetry is more definite, if not more definable, than that of prose fiction, or else that poets are more really sure of themselves. Barbey d'Aurevilly[445] had an apparently undoubting mind, but perhaps there were unacknowledged doubts, which transformed themselves into jealousies, in his heart of hearts. For myself, I sympathise with his political and religious (if not exactly with his ecclesiastical) views pretty decidedly; I think (speaking as usual with ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... to be at all generally read or at all justly appreciated. He had, partly in obeying, and partly in working against his official superiors, acquired a distinct position as an educational reformer. He had become something of a figure in society. But, above all, he had proclaimed with undoubting authority, and had exemplified with remarkable and varied skill, a new or at least a very greatly altered kind of literary criticism. And this had already threatened incursions into domains from which men of letters as such had generally kept aloof, or which, if they had touched, they had ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... that Mr. Spedding's industry and profound interest in the subject has brought together throws but an uncertain light on Bacon's long disappointment. Was it the rooted misgiving of a man of affairs like Burghley at that passionate contempt of all existing knowledge, and that undoubting confidence in his own power to make men know, as they never had known, which Bacon was even now professing? Or was it something soft and over-obsequious in character which made the uncle, who knew well ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... the remarkable transaction in Jeremiah xxxii. 6, to 44, where the prophet purchases his uncle's estate at the approach of the Babylonian captivity, in his undoubting confidence in the future restoration of the people. In the one case it is the triumph of religious faith, in the other of ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... such loss of power through the crank as he imagined, nor is it likely that any other device for obtaining rotary from rectilinear motion will be found superior to that which Watt devised. But Peter Cooper assailed this fancied evil with undoubting confidence, both as to its existence and as to his ability to do away with it. The result was an invention for which he received, April 28, 1828, letters patent of the United States. At that early day patents were comparatively few,—so few that this one bears no number; and ...
— Peter Cooper - The Riverside Biographical Series, Number 4 • Rossiter W. Raymond |
