"Philosopher" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... concealed something of the philosopher under the garb of a wag. His quaint sayings and doings were frequently quoted with great relish among this rural population. He had a way of his own of shooting facts and truths into the uncultivated understandings of these laborers,—facts and truths that never otherwise could have ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... B. F., to bring down two books, of which I will mark the places on this slip of paper. (While he is gone, I may say that this boy, our land-lady's youngest, is called BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, after the celebrated philosopher of that name. ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... could see spirits by looking into an earthen vessel, but Cardan was little impressed by what he saw, and began to talk with the school-master about Archimedes. The school-master brought out a work of the Greek philosopher with which was bound up the Ptolemaei Libri de Judiciis. Cardan fastened upon it at once, and wanted to buy it, but the school-master insisted that he should take it as a gift. He declares that his Commentaries thereupon are ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... then the sudden change to a warm fire, I was rather inclined not to move on the entrance of the stranger. But the name of Thomas Dick, LL.D., roused me in a moment, from my lethargy; I could scarcely believe that I was in the presence of the "Christian Philosopher." Dr. Dick is one of the men to whom the age is indebted. I never find myself in the presence of one to whom the world owes so much as Dr. Dick, without feeling a thrilling emotion, as if I were in the land of spirits. Dr. Dick had come to our lodgings to see and congratulate Wm. and ...
— Three Years in Europe - Places I Have Seen and People I Have Met • William Wells Brown
... yielding. Pride, a silly self-conceit, the greatest enemy of the human race, forbade him to yield. For, on the previous night, Helen had snubbed him—and not for the first time. He could not accept the snub with meekness, though it would have paid him handsomely to do so, though as a Christian and a philosopher he ought to have done so. He ...
— Helen with the High Hand (2nd ed.) • Arnold Bennett
... Sydney, they pushed on to Boola Boola, avoiding a halt at Cree's Station, but making at once for Prometesky's cottage, a wonderful hermitage, as Dermot described it, almost entirely the work of the old man's ingenious hands. There he lived, like a philosopher of old, with the most sternly plain and scanty materials for comfort—a mat, a table, and a chair; but surrounded by beautiful artistic figures and intricate mathematical diagrams traced on his floor and wall, reams of essays and poems where he had tried to work out ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... not like the indifferentist philosopher, so well set forth by Charles Woodruff Shields in his Philosophia Ultima,[4] as one who would not invade, but only ignore the province of revelation, regarding its mysteries as matters entirely too vague to be taken into the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... we read, with some degree of astonishment, a treatise on this exploded subject, by a philosopher, an eminent physician, a privy counseller of the then Empress Queen, and a professor in the university of Vienna. It was long doubted whether the professor was in earnest, but the world was at length forced to admit, that the great Antonius de Haen certainly believed in witchcraft, ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... know you must face certain facts those early Socialists ignored. Whatever sort of community you dream of, you realize that it has to be made of the sort of people you meet every day or of the children growing up under their influence. The damping words of the old philosopher to the ardent Social reformer of seventeen were really the quintessence of our criticism of revolutionary Socialism: "Will your aunts join us, my dear? No! Well—is the grocer on our side? And the family solicitor? ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells
... brought into the world by herself, by an intended act of suicide." Here follows a short sketch of the incidents recorded by Godwin, and then the article concludes: "Such was the catastrophe of a female philosopher of the new order, such the events of her life, and such the apology for her conduct. It will be read with disgust by every female who has any pretensions to delicacy; with detestation by every one attached to the interests of religion and morality; and with indignation ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... artistic player of the game had received a shattering blow. Then there was the imposition. This in itself would have troubled him little. To be kept in on a half-holiday is annoying, but it is one of those ills which the flesh is heir to, and your true philosopher can always take his gruel ...
— Tales of St. Austin's • P. G. Wodehouse
... poems written about his story, which is essentially that of Potiphar's wife. The parallel between the tales of Raja Rasâlu and Pûran Bhagat and those of the Southern Aryan conqueror Vikramâditya and his (in legend) elder brother Bhatrihari, the saint and philosopher, is ...
— Tales Of The Punjab • Flora Annie Steel
... rock? When thou art about to bid farewell to the Sun and Moon itself, wilt thou sit down and cry like a child? Why, what didst thou hear, what didst thou learn? why didst thou write thyself down a philosopher, when thou mightest have written what was the fact, namely, "I have made one or two Compendiums, I have read some works of Chrysippus, and I have not even touched the hem ...
— The Golden Sayings of Epictetus • Epictetus
... presents himself to memory and imagination as a great citizen rather than as a great warrior; as a philosopher rather than as a general.... Washington and Bolivar have in common their identity of purpose; both aspired to the freedom of a country and the establishment of democracy. The difference between these two illustrious men in the excessive difficulty one had to conquer and the abundance ...
— Simon Bolivar, the Liberator • Guillermo A. Sherwell
... through Kate's door, a woman came out from the back. "Who do you want?" said she. "Kate." "Oh! she has got a friend with her,—shall I knock?" "No," I replied, and went my way. I didn't like the idea of her having a working-man after me, or before me. I was not then a philosopher, "But what does it matter?" said ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... Americanization. You may study methods, but you find yourselves foiled because there is no one method—no standardized method that can always be used to deal correctly and truly with any human problem. Bergson, the French philosopher, was here a year or two ago, and he made a suggestion to me that seemed very profound when he said that the theory of evolution could carry on as to species until it came to deal with man, and then you had to deal with each individual man upon the theory ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... homely way, the dean went on, that he put an iron lamp before a statue of one of the gods and that a thief stole the lamp. What did the philosopher do? He reflected that it was in the character of a thief to steal and determined to buy an earthen lamp next day ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... who gives his name to "PIETRO OF ABANO" was the greatest Italian philosopher and physician of the thirteenth century.[106] He was also an astrologer, pretending to magical knowledge, and persecuted, as Mr. Browning relates. But the special story he tells of him has been told ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... Fakingham, borne in Norfolke, a greie frier, proceded doctor in Oxenford, a great diuine, and an excellent philosopher, prouinciall of his order here in England; Laurence Holbecke, a monke of Ramsie, well sene in the Hebrue toong, and wrote thereof a dictionarie; Iohn Colton, archbishop of Ardmach; Iohn Marrie, so called of ...
— Chronicles (3 of 6): Historie of England (1 of 9) - Henrie IV • Raphael Holinshed
... both of whom were engaged in survey work. Drake, aged 24, was the draughtsman and naturalist; Palmer, [230] just upon 30, but already one of the first linguists of the day, the archaeologist. Palmer, like Burton, had leanings towards occultism; crystal gazing, philosopher's stone hunting. After making a mess with chemicals, he would gaze intently at it, and say excitedly: "I wonder what will happen"—an expression that was always expected of him on such and all other exciting occasions. A quadruple friendship ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... that is sufficiently established, yet entangles us in a perplexity which sorely embarrasses Reason in its theoretic employment. This duty, however, belongs only to speculative philosophy, in order that it may clear the way for practical philosophy. The philosopher then has no option whether he will remove the apparent contradiction or leave it untouched; for in fhe latter case the theory respecting this would be bonum vacans into the possession of which the fatalist ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... brought her forth, as she were the full moon; and, when she came into the King's presence, she saluted him and kissed ground before him; whereupon he joyed in her with joy exceeding and said to the Prince, "O Sage, O philosopher, all this is of thy blessing. Allah increase to us the benefit of thy healing breath!"[FN29] The Prince replied, "O King, for the completion of her cure it behoveth that thou go forth, thou and all thy troops and guards, to the place where thou foundest her, not forgetting the beast of black ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... flowed around her majestic colonial empire; Russia, grimly determined to hold an even balance with France in Europe while reestablishing by the overthrow of Turkey the eastern counterpoise to Napoleon's western dominion. The Czar of Muscovy would fain have passed for a philosopher. Fourteen years earlier, when in his eighteenth year, he had fallen under the charm of Prince Adam Czartoryski, a youth of about his own age, whom the Empress Catherine had taken as a hostage after the final dismemberment of Poland in 1795. Trained by his grandmother to play her own ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... the Prussian Army. He did not find much piety there. He served in the war against Charles XII. of Sweden {1715.}, was present at the siege of Stralsund, thought soldiers no better than civilians, accepted his discharge with joy, and wandered around from town to town, like the old philosopher seeking an honest man. At last, however, he made his way to the town of Grlitz, in Silesia {1717.}; and there he came into personal contact with two Pietist clergymen, Schfer and Schwedler. For the first time in his weary pilgrimage he met a pastor who was also a man. ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... tormenting one's self by anticipation. I should think it quite as rational to case myself in a suit of mail, by way of security to my person, as to keep my mind perpetually on the rack of anticipating evil. I perfectly agree with that philosopher who says, if we confine ourselves to general reflections on the evils of life, that can have no effect in preparing us for them; and if we bring them home to us, that is the certain means ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... it were only for the sake of the severe mental discipline, I should not think very highly of the philosopher who had not, at least once in his life, worked at the elucidation of some special point" (L'Avenir de la science, ...
— Introduction to the Study of History • Charles V. Langlois
... story is not thus told. I feel the omnipresence of mystery in such wise as to make it far easier for me to adopt the view of Euripides, that what we call death may be but the dawning of true knowledge and of true life. The greatest philosopher of modern times, the master and teacher of all who shall study the process of evolution for many a day to come, holds that the conscious soul is not the product of a collocation of material particles, but ...
— The Destiny of Man - Viewed in the Light of His Origin • John Fiske
... and majestic intuition of Plato! Alas for the [Greek: mousichae] which he justly regarded as an all-sufficient education for the soul! Alas for him and for it!—since both were most desperately needed, when both were most entirely forgotten or despised [1]. Pascal, a philosopher whom we both love, has said, how truly!—"Que tout notre raisonnement se reduit a ceder au sentiment;" and it is not impossible that the sentiment of the natural, had time permitted it, would have regained its old ascendency ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... Praxed's Church Robert Browning Up at a Villa—Down in the City Robert Browning All Saints' Edmund Yates An Address to the Unco Guid Robert Burns The Deacon's Masterpiece Oliver Wendell Holmes Ballade of a Friar Andrew Lang The Chameleon James Merrick The Blind Men and the Elephant John Godfrey Saxe The Philosopher's Scales Jane Taylor The Maiden and the Lily John Fraser The Owl-Critic James Thomas Fields The Ballad of Imitation Austin Dobson The Conundrum of the Workshops Rudyard Kipling The V-a-s-e James Jeffrey ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... the absence of divine care in the shaping of the world. Doubt was born of the corruption of society; Nature and Man were said to be against faith in the rule of a God, wise, just, and merciful. In 1710, after Bayle's death, Leibnitz, a German philosopher then resident in Paris, wrote in French a book, with a title formed from Greek words meaning Justice of God, Theodicee, in which he met Bayle's argument by reasoning that what we cannot understand confuses us, because ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... aggressive, and of an irascible temperament, he soon became as serious as a philosopher and as gentle as a lamb. His intelligence seemed to increase visibly. He discoursed like a man inspired, and said ...
— Modern Saints and Seers • Jean Finot
... the unfortunate people on the lee-side; while those on the weather-side were thrown forward with their faces on their plates. This was treatment which probably John Bull would not like; but being a philosopher, and besides a native of an island, he would endure it as one of the necessities of nature. But there were four French passengers on board who took it in a different way, and probably conceiving that a vessel at sea was something in the nature of a stage-coach, and the Indian ocean a high-road, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... a sound policy to be providing services, drugs, and nursing free?" chimed in a grey-bearded old fellow, evidently the philosopher ...
— Labrador Days - Tales of the Sea Toilers • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... him, trailing a lavender lounging robe. "You're such a solemn philosopher, sir," she observed comfortably, "working through all the ramifications of things. Why do you? You were always ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... gentlemen!" cried Rossitur, bursting forth, "What will you say when I tell you that Mr. Carleton deserted me and the sport in a most unceremonious manner, and that he, the cynical philosopher, the reserved English gentleman, the gay man of the world, you are all of 'em by turns, aren't you, Carleton? he! has gone and made a very cavaliero servente of himself to a piece of rusticity, and spent all to- day in helping a little ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... orders units will not move beyond the position occupied at that time." At last there had dawned the day for which we had lived—and so many had died. Strange to relate there was no tremendous excitement. Perhaps the philosopher spoke truly when he said that one always has a feeling of regret on doing a thing for the last time. Perhaps we had been fed on rumours so often that we took this for one. Perhaps we were too weary in mind and body to grasp the significance ...
— The Fifth Battalion Highland Light Infantry in the War 1914-1918 • F.L. Morrison
... do, Mr. Poulter! I'd give you my five-shilling piece if you'd let me keep the sword a week. Look here!" said Tom, reaching out the attractively large round of silver. The young dog calculated the effect as well as if he had been a philosopher. ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... world a disgust to him. There is no lamentation over his father's death, so dwelt upon by the king; for loving grief does not crush. Far less could his uncle's sharp practice, in scheming for his own election during Hamlet's absence, have wrought in a philosopher like him such an effect. The one makes him sorrowful, the other might well annoy him, but neither could render him unhappy: his misery lies at his mother's door; it is her conduct that has put out ...
— The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - A Study with the Text of the Folio of 1623 • George MacDonald
... the philosopher of love, to realities. He recalled the circumstances of his saving Kenneth, and the price the boy was to pay for that service; and it suddenly came to him that it was wasted breath to plead Kenneth's cause with Cynthia, when by his own future actions ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... globe, showing, with the assistance of tables, constructed by himself, the variations of the magnetic needle, and ascertaining the longitude, for the safety of navigation. It appears that this scheme had been referred to sir Isaac Newton; but that great philosopher excusing himself on account of his advanced age, all applications were useless, till 1751, when the subject was referred, by order of lord Anson, to Dr. Bradley, the celebrated professor of astronomy. ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... were doomed to be eventually directed against themselves. From M. de Maurepas to M. Turgot, from M. Turgot to M. de Calonne, from M. de Calonne to M. Necker, from M. Necker to M. de Malesherbes, he floated from an honest man to an intriguant, from a philosopher to a banker, whilst the spirit of system and charlatanism ill supplied the spirit of government. God, who had given many men of notoriety during this reign, had refused it a statesman; all was promise and deception. The court ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... shall give the description of nature from the writings of a philosopher who has particularly studied this subject. It is true that M. de Luc, who furnishes the description, draws, from this process of nature, an argument for the perpetual duration or stability of mountains; and this is the very opposite of that view ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 2 (of 4) • James Hutton
... much strangers among the Egyptians and Syrians as among the Latins— the Hellenic literati began more and more to turn their eyes towards Rome. Among the host of Greek attendants with which the Roman of quality at this time surrounded himself, the philosopher, the poet, and the memoir-writer played conspicuous parts by the side of the cook, the boy-favourite, and the jester. We meet already literati of note in such positions; the Epicurean Philodemus, for instance, was installed as domestic philosopher with Lucius Piso consul in 696, and occasionally ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... Professor James has described as "our more or less dumb sense of what life honestly and deeply means," helps us to make clear our idea of God. A philosopher is just a thoughtful person who takes the discoveries that his religious, moral, aesthetic, scientific experiences have brought home, and tries to set in order all he knows of ...
— Some Christian Convictions - A Practical Restatement in Terms of Present-Day Thinking • Henry Sloane Coffin
... sight there were goats feeding or playing. The mountains have red deer, but they came not within view; and if what is said of their vigilance and subtlety be true, they have some claim to that palm of wisdom, which the eastern philosopher, whom Alexander interrogated, gave to those beasts which live ...
— A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland • Samuel Johnson
... schools who remarked his intelligence, prematurely deprived of the intimate influence of his family, this winner of a Lycee scholarship, accustomed to depend upon himself alone, to live only with himself, merely lived by himself and for himself. An egotistic philosopher given to analysis of the soul, voluptuously immersed in his introspection like a big cat curled up in a ball, he was not moved at all by the agitation of the others. These three friends of his who never could agree among themselves he put in the same bag—with the "populars." Did ...
— Pierre and Luce • Romain Rolland
... our ignorance and errors, especially about slavery and the rights of States, and rejoice in the results of the war. In vain Canby and Palmer tried to suppress him. On a celebrated occasion an Emperor of Germany proclaimed himself above grammar, and this earnest philosopher was not to be restrained by canons of taste. I apologized meekly for my ignorance, on the ground that my ancestors had come from England to Virginia in 1608, and, in the short intervening period of two hundred ...
— Destruction and Reconstruction: - Personal Experiences of the Late War • Richard Taylor
... mean and abject superstition of a monk all the courage and magnanimity of the greatest hero; and, what may be deemed more extraordinary, the justice and integrity of a disinterested patriot, the mildness and humanity of an accomplished philosopher. So far from taking advantage of the divisions among the English, or attempting to expel those dangerous rivals from the provinces which they still possessed in France, he had entertained many scruples with regard to the sentence of attainder pronounced ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume
... sort of God he fancied himself asked to believe in. Would you call a Greek philosopher wicked for not believing in Mercury or Venus? If a man had the same notion of God that I have, or anything like it, and did not at least desire that there might be such a God, then I confess I should have difficulty in understanding ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... Epicurean, as he boasted himself to be—Atticus had nevertheless a kind heart and an open hand. He has generally been called selfish, somewhat unfairly; at least his selfishness never took the form of indifference or unkindness to others. In one sense he was a truer philosopher than Cicero: for he seems to have acted through life on that maxim of Socrates which his friend professed to approve, but certainly never followed,—that "a wise man kept out of public business". His vocation was certainly not ...
— Cicero - Ancient Classics for English Readers • Rev. W. Lucas Collins
... principles, viva voce, he always used to say—"I have published my opinions; consult my works; and, if I am wrong, confute me publicly." To most persons this mode of confutation was by far too operose; but they might have confoundedly puzzled the philosopher ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 484 - Vol. 17, No. 484, Saturday, April 9, 1831 • Various
... the patience of his great forebear. If Germany had left him alone he would to-day have been a good citizen, who would never have permitted futile dreams to enter his head, and who would have contemplated his greatness with the smile of a philosopher. And who can say where this will end? ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath
... prone to moralize In scientific doubt On certain facts that Nature tries To puzzle us about,— For I am no philosopher Of wise elucidation, But speak of things as they occur, From ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... distinction, greatly interested the translator of Plato, Thucydides, and Aristotle. Though he was not the kind of man to inflate himself with any idea that he was "Socrates redivivus" I have no doubt that he found the worldlywise malice of Lord Westbury as piquant as the Greek philosopher did ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... Plato's Republic will readily recall to mind that wonderful passage at the end of the sixth book, in which the philosopher, under the image of geometrical lines, exhibits the various relations of the intelligible to the sensible world; especially his lofty aspirations with regard to "that second segment of the intelligible world, which ...
— The Philosophy of the Conditioned • H. L. Mansel
... found of Franklin's possessions not a little which took my fancy, and such of it as I chose I carry with me to New York, as fair spoil of war. Prithee, draw a picture of the old fox as he will appear when he hears of his loss. 'T will at least give him the opportunity to prove himself the 'philosopher' he is said to be. I have taken his oil portrait, and when I get fit quarters again I shall hang it, and nightly pray that I may live long enough to do the same to the original. Heaven save me if ever I be captured, though, for I make little doubt that in his rage he would accord me the very fate ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... She was trying to think what had changed the driver's friendly manner. He had neither greeted her nor proffered the reins. And now, oh, philosopher of the human heart, for each of us is a philosopher inside, answer me: why did the driver, who was a bit of a hero, and the lavender silk, who was an adventuress, and the gold teeth, who was a slattern, neither pure nor simple, ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... but who never inspire deep and strong attachment. I remember to have heard good observers say that Lady Holland had more feeling than Lord Holland—would regret with livelier grief the loss of a friend than this equable philosopher was capable of feeling. The truth is social qualities—merely social and intellectual—are not those which inspire affection. A man may be steeped in faults and vices, nay, in odious qualities, and yet be the object of passionate attachment, ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... much in her thoughts, Weston Marchmont, would not have denounced whimsy-whamsies. He would have claimed an open mind and protested that he was ready to entertain every notion on its merits. But temper and taste led to the same end as ignorance and simplicity; the philosopher and the housewife met on a common ground of disapproval and disdain. Mrs. Baxter kept her house and made petticoats. Marchmont read his books, mixed with his world, and did his share in his obvious duty of governing the country. Misty dreams, great ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope
... reader will excuse me for dwelling on these and the like particulars, which, however insignificant they may appear to grovelling vulgar minds, yet will certainly help a philosopher to enlarge his thoughts and imagination, and apply them to the benefit of public as well as private life, which was my sole design in presenting this, and other accounts of my travels, to the world; wherein ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten
... Huh! Can't a feller count on his fingers? What were they given us for, I'd like to know?" demanded this youthful philosopher. ...
— The Corner House Girls Growing Up - What Happened First, What Came Next. And How It Ended • Grace Brooks Hill
... moment were the preparations, that a special officer was appointed to take them in charge. To him were accorded large privileges, very considerable appointments, and a retinue equal to a prince's, counting in a chancellor, treasurer, comptroller, vice-chamberlain, divine, philosopher, astronomer, poet, physician, master of requests, clown, civilian, ushers, pages, footmen, messengers, jugglers, herald, orator, hunters, tumblers, friar, and fools. Over this mock court the mock monarch presided during the ...
— Christmas Entertainments • Alice Maude Kellogg
... things which you do not execute as well as your brother, man; no, nor ever will. Pardon me, if I doubt whether you will ever produce a great poet from your choirs, or a Mozart, or a Phidias, or a Michael Angelo, or a great philosopher, or a great scholar. By which last is meant, not one who depends simply on an infinite memory, but also on an infinite and electrical power of combination; bringing together from the four winds, like the angel of the resurrection, what else were dust from dead men's ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... sweetest strains. He can talk of liberty in the most swelling, high-sounding, and fascinating style, while all the time he is making men the most degraded and miserable slaves. He can lead people, singing and dancing, laughing and shouting, through a philosopher's paradise, to a purgatory of guilt and horror. And all the time he will preach to them the finest doctrines; the most exalted sentiments. 'Religion!—everything is religion, that is in accordance with the laws of our own nature, that ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... very few people in it, else there could not be so much ice and sea and sky. Tommy, here, I know, thinks fondly of a place he calls Toronto. He mistakes. It exists only in his mind,—a memory of a former life he knew. Of course, he does not think so. That is but natural; for he is no philosopher, ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... thinking? Thinking is an attempt to express infinite thoughts, affections, relations, and events, in finite terms. The child strings buttons. The philosopher strings God, angels, devils, brutes, men, and their appurtenances and deeds. Hence no real thought will quite go into words. Out beyond the word hangs the infinite remainder of our idea. The search for a vocabulary is the search for a ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown
... was from that gentlemanly philosopher from Sweden, a great friend of the Governor, you know. But, alas, I might as well have tried to fascinate an iceberg! I do not believe that he knew, after a half-hour's conversation with me, whether I was man or woman. That was defeat ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... were all comfortably seated around the table in the library of the Embassy, and the General and Edestone had lighted cigars, while Jones, who never smoked, looked on, the old General, statesman, philosopher, and writer ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney
... a celebrated and sometimes misunderstood controversy with Avicenna, a very famous Arabian philosopher. It was a philosophical, but not strictly scientific, controversy, for both persons accepted or assumed the existence of spontaneous generation. Avicenna claimed that it took place by the powers of Nature alone, whilst ...
— Science and Morals and Other Essays • Bertram Coghill Alan Windle
... kind of remains you can't find are the remains of a Philosopher's lunch. 'Greedy' is a mild word to use for their ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed
... the waters, its whole life is a continued good to man. It hawks over pools and fields and through gardens, decimating swarms of mosquitoes, flies, gnats, and other baneful insects. It is a true Malthus' delight, and, following that sanguinary philosopher, we may believe that our Dragon fly is an entomological Tamerlane or Napoleon sent into the world by a kind Providence to prevent too close a jostling among the myriads of ...
— Our Common Insects - A Popular Account of the Insects of Our Fields, Forests, - Gardens and Houses • Alpheus Spring Packard
... pen busy. He is one of the most valued contributors on The Sporting Life staff, and his work in other journals has made his name a household word as the "Father of Base Ball." He comes from a famous family of English birth, his brother, Mr. Edwin Chadwick, being the noted sanitary philosopher of England. Mr. Chadwick has edited ...
— Spalding's Baseball Guide and Official League Book for 1889 • edited by Henry Chadwick
... incapacity to attain what is most required and desired by such a spirit as I am a slave to. If there be rewards, I am certainly well paid, but hard schooling in life's thankless lessons has made we somewhat of a philosopher, and I've learned to take the buffets and rewards of fortune with equal thanks, and in suffering all to suffer—I won't say nothing, but comparatively little. Dick Stoddard wrote a poem called "The King's Bell," which fits my case exactly ...
— [19th Century Actor] Autobiographies • George Iles
... limited in extent and temporary. They have been formed and dissolved by the force of accidents, or by inevitable circumstances; and when we have enumerated them one by one we have made of them all that can be made. But there is one remarkable association which attracts the attention of the philosopher, not political nor religious—or at least only partially and not essentially such—which began in the earliest times and grew with each succeeding age till it reached its complete development, and then continued on, vigorous and unwearied, and still remains as definite and as firm ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... because they were the cunning framers of maxims and proverbs that rightly interpreted were calculated to advance and consolidate the moral and material welfare of the nation around them. Of the remaining two, it is true that one was an eminent politician and legislator, and the other a natural philosopher of the first order; but it is questionable if either of them would have been considered entitled to their prominent place in the Grecian Pleiades of Wise Men had they not been proverb-makers and utterers of brief but pregnant "wisdom-words" ...
— The Celtic Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 3, January 1876 • Various
... the fragrant breeze which breathed from the flowers and shrubs, that were so disposed as to send a waste of sweets around. One goodly old man, named Michael Agelastes, big, burly, and dressed like an ancient Cynic philosopher, was distinguished by assuming, in a great measure, the ragged garb and mad bearing of that sect, and by his inflexible practice of the strictest ceremonies exigible by the Imperial family. He was known by an affectation of cynical principle and ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... or whose utterance entitles him to be listened to more reverently as seer and saint. He was born in 1805. He was bred as an engineer. He fulfilled for years the calling of minister and preacher. He gradually exchanged this for the activity of a professor. He was a religious philosopher in the old sense, but he was also a critic and historian. His position with reference to the New Testament was partly antiquated before his Seat of Authority in Religion, 1890, made its appearance. Evolutionism never became with him a coherent and consistent assumption. ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore
... all; for he is no more an enemy of God than any romantic and adventurous young sower of wild oats. Had you and I been in his place at his age, who knows whether we might not have done as he did, unless indeed your fastidiousness had saved you from the empress Catherine. Byron was as little of a philosopher as Peter the Great: both were instances of that rare and useful, but unedifying variation, an energetic genius born without the prejudices or superstitions of his contemporaries. The resultant unscrupulous freedom of thought made Byron a greater poet than Wordsworth just as ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... observation of humanity with its entire accumulation of custom and prejudice; he is akin to Rousseau in a high-strung susceptibility to emotions, sentiments, and ideas; and he is tinged with a cynicism to which there is no closer parallel than in the maxims of La Rochefoucauld. The union of the philosopher, the enthusiast, and the man of the world is fairly unusual in literature, but in Hazlitt's case the union was not productive of any sharp contradictions. His common sense served as a ballast to ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... publication have seen as many attitudes taken toward one of the ablest poetic spirits of the century. To the first he appeared an enigma, a writer hopelessly obscure, perhaps not even clear in his own mind, as to the message he wished to deliver; to the second he appeared a prophet and a philosopher, full of all wisdom and subtlety, too deep for common mortals to fathom with line and plummet,—concealing below green depths of ocean priceless gems of thought and feeling; to the third, a poet full of inequalities in conception and expression, who has done many good things well and has ...
— Browning's Shorter Poems • Robert Browning
... made a point of calling on the philosopher of Ferney, who for some years received their visits very willingly, giving them fetes and plays; but he became tired of this, and at last would only see those who could amuse him while he amused them. A quaker from Philadelphia, called Claude Gay, travelling in Europe, stayed some time ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume XII., No. 324, July 26, 1828 • Various
... Bacon to have been told that the most learned men in Europe have studied English authors to learn to think and to write. Our philosopher was surely somewhat mortified, when, in his dedication of the Essays, he observed, that, "Of all my other works, my Essays have been most current; for that, as it seems, they come home to men's business and bosoms." It is too much to hope to find in a vast ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... Universal Adjuster! Do you know: What you appear to be to others? What you really are? What you want to be? What would overcome your present and future difficulties? Write to x, Philosopher. You will receive full particulars of his personal work which is dedicated to your service. No problem is too big or too small for Numerology. Understanding ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... Thank you, sir." And Matt Peasley was off like a tin-canned dog to slick himself up for the party, while Cappy entered the elevator chuckling. "If I ever find the sour-souled philosopher who said you can't mix business and sentiment without resultant chaos," he soliloquized, "I'll ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne
... (Philosopher's way), two miles in length, commands some of the finest prospect on the Rhine. It winds through charming vineyards, and from it may be enjoyed splendid views of the town, castle, valley, and of the beautiful outlines of the ...
— The Youthful Wanderer - An Account of a Tour through England, France, Belgium, Holland, Germany • George H. Heffner
... it is to be hoped that this patient creature does not suffer to extremities,—and that to the savages who still belabor his poor carcass with their blows (considering the sort of anvil they are laid upon,) he might in some sort, if he could speak, exclaim, with the philosopher, "Lay on! you beat but ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... the naive unconsciousness with which they measure and weigh the moral qualities of other nations by the yards of cotton or tons of manufactured iron which they consume for the benefit of Manchester and Sheffield, are certainly as comic as anything in Aristophanes. The madness of the philosopher who deemed himself personally answerable for the obliquity of the ecliptic has more than its match in the sense of responsibility shown by British journalists for the good conduct of the rest of mankind. All other ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... Rationalists are like the spiders, they spin all out of their own bowels. But give me a philosopher who, like the bee, hath a middle faculty, gathering from abroad, but digesting that which is gathered by ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... things, the earliest savage reasoners would decide: (1) that man has a 'life' (which leaves him temporarily in sleep, finally in death); (2) that man also possesses a 'phantom' (which appears to other people in their visions and dreams). The savage philosopher would then 'combine his information,' like a celebrated writer on Chinese metaphysics. He would merely 'combine the life and the phantom,' as 'manifestations of one and the same soul.' The result would be 'an apparitional soul,' ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... Michael lazily, 'did you ever hear of a certain philosopher named Diogenes, and how he set off one day, lamp in hand, to search through the city for an honest man? Really, your remark makes me inclined to light my own private farthing dip, and look for this curious anomaly, an ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... As a deeply-studied philosopher of the old-fashioned sort, his words, even when addressed to a German farmer, were deliberately chosen, and his sentences stately, sonorous and precise. Regarding me as a man of books, he permitted himself to roam widely ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... the ink is dried up may prove a public calamity. Moreover, cordiality prevailed among all, all shades of difference were effaced. In the secret sittings of the Committee Madier de Montjau, that firm and generous heart, De Flotte, brave and thoughtful, a fighting philosopher of the Devolution, Carnot, accurate, cold, tranquil, immovable, Jules Favre, eloquent, courageous, admirable through his simplicity and his strength, inexhaustible in resources as in sarcasms, doubled, by combining them, the diverse powers of ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... Socrates preached differed as much from the volage and voluptuous Zeus as the God of Christendom differs from the Jahveh of Job, yet, in a divergence so wide, an idealist, very poor except in ideas; a teacher killed by those who knew not what they did; a philosopher that drained the cup without even asking that it pass from him; a mere reformer, though dangerous perhaps as every reformer worth the name must be; but, otherwise, a mere man like any other, only a little better, could obviously have had ...
— The Lords of the Ghostland - A History of the Ideal • Edgar Saltus
... of power, how enchanting and pure! A sacred fire which no breeze can trouble, And yet a tempest that stirs the very soul, A glowing flame which can melt the philosopher's stone: Such is your ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... bearers for excursions at night. As he was young and good-looking, nobody troubled about where all these luxuries came from. It was quite the custom in those days that a well-set-up young gentleman should want for nothing, and Sainte-Croix was commonly said to have found the philosopher's stone. In his life in the world he had formed friendships with various persons, some noble, some rich: among the latter was a man named Reich de Penautier, receiver-general of the clergy and treasurer ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE BRINVILLIERS • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... are no philosopher, Daisy. If you were a philosopher, you would not be so certain of anything. There is a curtain over the sun; and there are rents or holes in the curtain sometimes,—so large that we can see the dark body of the sun ...
— Melbourne House, Volume 1 • Susan Warner
... story of yours, my friend, brings to my mind a story of a man whom I once knew—a great magician in his time, and a necromancer and a chemist and an alchemist and mathematician and a rhetorician, an astronomer, an astrologer, and a philosopher ...
— Twilight Land • Howard Pyle
... the barred gates, and were chased by the policeman when he came that way. Something like this thought was in Paolo's mind when he stood at sunset and peered in at the golden rays falling athwart the green, but he did not know it. Paolo was not a philosopher, but he loved beauty and beautiful things, and was conscious of a great hunger which there was nothing in ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... object in the universe," said a certain philosopher, "is a good man struggling with adversity"; yet there is still a greater, which is the good man ...
— Leaves of Life - For Daily Inspiration • Margaret Bird Steinmetz
... Bill became law he would have signed the death-warrant of the Establishment. Coming from a Presbyterian who helped to disestablish the Church in Wales, this showed the heights of altruism to which a real philosopher may rise. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 11, 1919 • Various
... the disciple of Justin, the philosopher and martyr, selected and patched together from the Four Gospels and constructed a Gospel, which he called Diatessaron, that is Miscellanies. On this work Mar Ephraem wrote an exposition; and its commencement was—In the beginning ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot
... far as a philosopher means a lover of knowledge. A philosopher who has attained unto knowledge, I am not;—that ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner
... to turn the quick, fierce flame of enthusiasm to the service of a steady purpose, require some towering character—a character blending in highest expression the qualities of politician, patriot, philosopher, and statesman. ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... with the lad, Prince Karl," said the Chancellor, firmly. "In my youth I had some practice as a leech. I am acquainted with the art of healing. I could travel either as a doctor of healing, as a travelling philosopher seeking disputation with the scholars of each country, or, perhaps best of all, in mine own quality of a doctor of law. And in any case this young man might with all safety be my pupil or servant, whichever best ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... stood in constant economic need of each other. There was no longer any occasion for further delay, and on August 2 Edward and his queen crossed over to Dover. Received with open arms by his subjects, he was crowned at Westminster on August 19 by the new Archbishop of Canterbury, Robert Kilwardby, philosopher, theologian, and Dominican friar, whom Gregory X. had placed over the church of Canterbury, despite the vigorous efforts which Edward made to secure the primacy for Robert Burnell. He had been absent from England for ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... published in Scotland. The perusal of this little book changed the course of his whole life. It induced him to abandon all thoughts of the priesthood, and to try his fortune in the New World, in which the great philosopher had succeeded so well before him. A little more than a year later he left Glasgow, and in May, 1819, being now about twenty years old, landed at Halifax, Nova Scotia. He had less than twenty-five dollars in his purse, knew no vocation save that of a book-keeper, ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... jury listened with close attention to his graphic account of the rise and fall of the outrageous conspiracy which had attempted to shield its alluring offer of instant wealth behind the name of America's most practical philosopher, whose only receipt for the same end had been frugality and industry. Supported as Miller was by the corroborative testimony of other witnesses and by the certificates of deposit which Ammon had, with ...
— True Stories of Crime From the District Attorney's Office • Arthur Train
... try if I can discover what it is that inclines the men of speculation to embrace an opinion so remote from common sense as that seems to be. There has been a late excellent and deservedly esteemed philosopher who, no doubt, has given it very much countenance, by seeming to think the having abstract general ideas is what puts the widest difference in point of understanding betwixt man and beast. 'The having of general ideas,' saith ...
— The Analysis of Mind • Bertrand Russell
... knew each living pundit well, Could weigh the gifts of him or her, And well the market value tell Of poet and philosopher. But if he lost, the scenes behind, Somewhat of reverence vague and blind, Finding the actors human at the best, No readier lips than his the good ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... vocation of the spouse, of the rightly amorous soul—"a filosofia e necessario amore." There would be degrees of progress therein, as of course also of relapse: joys and sorrows, therefore. And, in interpreting these, the philosopher, whose intellectual ardours have superseded religion and love, is still a lover and a monk. All the influences of the convent, the heady, sweet incense, the pleading sounds, the sophisticated light and air, ...
— Giordano Bruno • Walter Horatio Pater
... from Ypres to Amiens they seem to have settled all the details between them, though they told us their adventures before even mentioning the Plan. Brian is to be guide, philosopher, and friend to the inmates and students of the James Wyndham Beckett College for the Blind. Also he is to give lectures on art and various other subjects. If he can learn to paint his blind impressions (as he believes ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... and good fathers; I am also convinced that there are many learned men among them, who make valuable contributions to history and philosophy, but whether they thus fulfil their proper object is another question. I should consider that a missionary has other duties than those of a philosopher. ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... than human seer, Yellow-breeched philosopher Seeing only what is fair, Sipping only what is sweet, Thou dost mock at fate and care, Leave the chaff, and take the wheat. When the fierce northwestern blast, Cools sea and land so far and fast, Thou already slumberest deep; Woe and want thou canst outsleep; Want and woe, which torture ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... as it will, the principles of Arius begin to revive, not only in England, but in Holland and Poland. The celebrated Sir Isaac Newton honoured this opinion so far as to countenance it. This philosopher thought that the Unitarians argued more mathematically than we do. But the most sanguine stickler for Arianism is the illustrious Dr. Clark. This man is rigidly virtuous, and of a mild disposition, is more fond of ...
— Letters on England • Voltaire
... reckon it did, marm, for that shot would a gone a couple a inches deeper but for my old mammy's camphor bag," answered the cheerful philosopher. ...
— Hospital Sketches • Louisa May Alcott
... much better than fighting for us, they are fighting with us, because, without a word of explanation or appeal, their ideas and ours are the same. We never have discussed with them, and we never shall discuss, what is decent and clean and honourable in human behaviour. A philosopher who is interested in this question can find plenty of intellectual exercise by discussing it with the Germans, Where an Englishman, a Canadian, and an Australian are met, there is no ...
— England and the War • Walter Raleigh
... honest she be, it is possible she may do that which other women do; and nothing that is possible she be so peremptorily denied nor the contrary thereof affirmed with such rigour as thou dost.' To which Bernabo made answer, saying, 'I am a merchant, and not a philosopher, and as a merchant I will answer; and I say that I acknowledge that what thou sayst may happen to foolish women in whom there is no shame; but those who are discreet are so careful of their honour that for the guarding thereof they become stronger than men, who reck ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... Every man with a sort of trained intellect must have them. You remember John Stuart Mill's problem: 'Which would you sooner be—a contented hog, or a discontented philosopher?' At the Front you have all the joys of the ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... and the flare of the match between his cupped palms brought out his honest features distinctly in the darkness. Bill felt a strong liking for this homely philosopher, and he listened as the other eyed him knowingly ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... quam loquentis.—A wise tongue should not be licentious and wandering; but moved and, as it were, governed with certain reins from the heart and bottom of the breast: and it was excellently said of that philosopher, that there was a wall or parapet of teeth set in our mouth, to restrain the petulancy of our words; that the rashness of talking should not only be retarded by the guard and watch of our heart, but be fenced in and defended by certain strengths placed in the mouth itself, and ...
— Discoveries and Some Poems • Ben Jonson
... the causes of this sudden and great change in my aunt's affairs. As I might have expected, he had none at all. The only account he could give of it was, that my aunt had said to him, the day before yesterday, 'Now, Dick, are you really and truly the philosopher I take you for?' That then he had said, Yes, he hoped so. That then my aunt had said, 'Dick, I am ruined.' That then he had said, 'Oh, indeed!' That then my aunt had praised him highly, which he was glad of. And that then they had come ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... to our foreign philosopher, but American citizens know very well what it means. Through this fine lattice-work fence they discern the shining ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton |
