"Philosophical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... speech, made scarcely a day before he closed his eyes in death, was typical of his whole generous, trustful, philosophical ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... he had written this letter, considered that it had been cold, calm, and philosophical. He could not go to America for three years without telling her of his purpose; nor could he mention that purpose, as he thought, in any language less glowing. But Florence, when she received it, did not regard it ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... that he knew Carps come to a certain place in a Pond to be fed at the ringing of a Bel; and it shall be a rule for me to make as little noise as I can when I am a fishing, until Sir Francis Bacon be confuted, which I shal give any man leave to do, and so leave off this Philosophical discourse ...
— The Complete Angler 1653 • Isaak Walton
... he was under any obligation to Bacon. Archimedes, and the Alexandrians, and the Arabians, and Leonardo da Vinci did very well before he was born; the discovery of America by Columbus and the circumnavigation by Magellan can hardly be attributed to him, yet they were the consequences of a truly philosophical reasoning. But the investigation of Nature is an affair of genius, not of rules. No man can invent an organon for writing tragedies and epic poems. Bacon's system is, in its own terms, an idol of the theatre. It would scarcely guide a man to a solution of the riddle ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge
... develop mastery of facts rather than to give new viewpoints. The student learns names of philosophers, and attempts to memorize the philosophic system developed by each thinker. Such a course imposes a heavy burden on retentive power, for no little effort is required to remember the distinctive philosophical systems advocated by the respective writers. To the students these philosophers represent a group of peculiar people differing one from the other in their degrees of "queerness." One system is as far removed as another from the life that the student experiences; no system helps ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... beauties and excellencies than he who has advanced, with all the rapidity that dispensations can furnish, from the lowest to the highest grades of the Order. In the former case, the design, the symbolism, the history, and the moral and philosophical bearing of each degree will be indelibly impressed upon the mind, and the appositeness of what has gone before to what is to succeed will be readily appreciated; but, in the latter, the lessons of one hour will ...
— The Principles of Masonic Law - A Treatise on the Constitutional Laws, Usages And Landmarks of - Freemasonry • Albert G. Mackey
... strength. To be compelled to be so quick-minded as the simians would be torture, to cows. Cows could dwell on one idea, week by week, without trying at all; but they'd all have brain-fever in an hour at a simian tea. A super-cow people would revel in long thoughtful books on abstruse philosophical subjects, and would sit up late reading them. Most of the ambitious simians who try it—out of pride—go to sleep. The typical simian brain is supremely distractable, and it's really too jumpy by nature to endure ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day
... contributors will be found our oldest and ablest writers. In it will be found Lectures, Essays upon Scientific, Philosophical, and Spiritual subjects, Spirit ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, July 1887 - Volume 1, Number 6 • Various
... from his own. Some hundred years hence, when students want to inform themselves of the history of the present day, and refer to files of "Times" and "Chronicle" for the purpose, I think it is possible that they will consult, not so much those luminous and philosophical leading articles which call our attention at present both by the majesty of their eloquence and the largeness of their type, but that they will turn to those parts of the journals into which information is squeezed into the smallest possible print, to the advertisements, namely, the ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors - Vol. II Great Britain And Ireland, Part Two • Francis W. Halsey
... seems to us the best yet of the long series of these remarkable Dartmoor tales. If Shakespeare had written novels we can think that some of his pages would have been like some of these. Here certainly is language, turn of humor, philosophical play, vigor of incident, such as might have come straight from Elizabeth's day.... The book is full of a very moving interest and is agreeable ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... returned to his picture, which represented a plain inhabited by a red tree and a blue tree shaking branches; an evident allusion to the sweets of friendship, which had a very philosophical effect. ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... is of them that deal with matters philosophical; either moral, as Tyrtaus, Phocylides, and Cato: or natural, as Lucretius and Virgil's Georgics; or astronomical, as Manilius, and Pontanus; or historical, as Lucan; which who mislike, the fault is in their ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... to assist her, not only for Miss Meakin's sake, but because he felt that Mavis dimly appreciated his intellectuality. Upon Mavis untruthfully replying that she did, Mr Napper gave a further effort to impress, not only her, but others seated about them; he talked his jargon of scientific and philosophical phrases at the top of his voice. She was relieved when she was rid of his company. She then took train to Shepherd's Bush, where she called on Miss Meakin as promised. Much to her surprise, Miss Meakin, who was now robed ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte
... this work treats of Volcanoes only in a popular way. Scientific details and philosophical speculations are accordingly avoided. Nevertheless, a perusal of the following pages may so stimulate the curiosity of youthful minds, that some, on attaining to riper years and more mature understanding, may be inspired with a longing to inquire more deeply ...
— Wonders of Creation • Anonymous
... fallacy of logical form. Now let us consider the present condition of the law as a subject for study, and the ideal toward which it tends. We still are far from the point of view which I desire to see reached. No one has reached it or can reach it as yet. We are only at the beginning of a philosophical reaction, and of a reconsideration of the worth of doctrines which for the most part still are taken for granted without any deliberate, conscious, and systematic questioning of their grounds. The development of our law has gone on for nearly ...
— The Path of the Law • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
... herself, armed with robust, philosophical notions, and a complete set of Northern nerves, she was in no way disconcerted at the effect her presence produced. She even had the good sense to appear indifferent to all the raillery she provoked, ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... action," he and his neighbours had long been in the habit of having recourse to societies, by way of obtaining "energetic means," as it was termed; and from his tenth year up to his twenty-fifth, this gentleman had been either a president, vice-president, manager, or committee-man, of some philosophical, political, or religious expedient to fortify human wisdom, make men better, and resist error and despotism. His experience had rendered him expert in what may well enough be termed the language of association. ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... Procop. Anecdot. c. 11. Theophan. Chron. p. 122. John Malala Chron. tom. ii. p. 62. I remember an observation, half philosophical. half superstitious, that the province which had been ruined by the bigotry of Justinian, was the same through which the ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... be comfortable, or have good weather, or make perfect connections, or find everything to your personal satisfaction; and you only add to your own discomfort and chagrin, as well as to the discomfort of every one else, by refusing to be philosophical. Those who are bad sailors should not go on yachting parties; they are always abjectly wretched, and are of no use to themselves or any one else. Those who hate walking should not start out on a tramp that is much too far for them and ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... was crude and uncritical. In proportion as men learnt to reflect upon their experience, it was bound to be modified, and to submit to reactionary influences. Such was the case at the very beginning of philosophical and scientific enquiry—and such was the case also at the opening of the "modern" era. Speaking generally, it may be said that as knowledge of natural law extended, the idea of mental activities in external ...
— Nature Mysticism • J. Edward Mercer
... contemplate the sad condition of multitudes of young children in the old world whose fate is to be brought up in ignorance and vice—a swarming, seething mass whom nobody owns—without seeing the need of free discussion of the philosophical principles that underlie these tangled social problems. The trials of Foote and Ramsey, too, for blasphemy, seemed unworthy a great nation in the nineteenth century. Think of well-educated men of good moral standing, thrown into prison in solitary confinement for speaking lightly ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... the feeble-minded by perpetual explanation of what is already simple ad nauseam for the mature intelligence of the teacher. It produces a sort of pedagogical cramp in the soul, for which there is no remedy like a philosophical view of the world, unless, perhaps, it be the study of the greatest poets, Shakespere, Dante, ...
— Child Stories from the Masters - Being a Few Modest Interpretations of Some Phases of the - Master Works Done in a Child Way • Maud Menefee
... his own (one or two, indeed, virtually starving) he had found it simple to account for in that their denominations had abandoned the true conception of the Church, and were logically degenerating into atrophy. What better proof of the barrenness of these modern philosophical and religious books did he need than the spectacle of other ministers—who tarried awhile on starvation salaries —reading them ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... powerful arguments, which yet do not carry irresistible conviction. We must beware of abandoning ourselves unreservedly to the prevailing truths of our time. A hundred years hence, many chapters of a book instinct to-day with this truth, will appear as ancient as the philosophical writings of the eighteenth century seem to us now, full as they are of a too perfect and non-existing man, or as so many works of the seventeenth century, whose value is lessened by their conception of ...
— The Life of the Bee • Maurice Maeterlinck
... honors of priority. Since the time of Savigny, the first appearance of contract both in Roman and German law has often been attributed to the case of a sale by some accident remaining incomplete. The question does not seem to be of great philosophical significance. For to explain how mankind first learned to promise, we must go to metaphysics, and find out how it ever came to frame a future tense. The nature of the particular promise which was first enforced in a given system can hardly lead to any truth ...
— The Common Law • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
... calf. When they should return to the house, and she took off her old gown, she and her visitor would be better acquainted, and their comparative opinions of each other would not depend so much on clothes. Miriam was accustomed to making philosophical reflections concerning her relations with the rest of the world; and in regard to these relations she ...
— The Girl at Cobhurst • Frank Richard Stockton
... of the thick periodicals, and whatever is gifted in Russia, for a time speaks only through them; lastly comes realism with an intensity unparalleled elsewhere, and everybody writes in prose, and only one kind of prose at that,—fiction. Not a drama, not a history, not an essay, not a philosophical treatise has yet grown on Russian soil; all the energy of Russia has gone into fiction, and Russia is not the country to produce, when it does produce masters, only one ...
— Lectures on Russian Literature - Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenef, Tolstoy • Ivan Panin
... plaudits from a larger host of writers than ever conspired to praise a man of genius, who was also a man of God. Johnson and Franklin, Scott, Coleridge, and Southey, Byron and Montgomery, Macintosh and Macaulay, have exerted their philosophical acumen and poetic feeling to analyze his various spell, and account for his unequalled fame; and though the round-cornered copies, with their diverting woodcuts, have not disappeared from the poor man's ingle, illustrated editions blaze from the shelves of every sumptuous library, ...
— Life of Bunyan • Rev. James Hamilton
... that you are pretty sure to hear only an apocryphal version of the thing as you now travel in the North. But Pretty Pierre was at Fort Luke when the battle occurred, and, before and after, he sifted the business thoroughly. For he had a philosophical turn, and this may be said of him, that he never lied except to save another from danger. In this matter he was cool and impartial from first to last, and evil as his reputation was in many ways there were those who believed and trusted him. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... and his sister established themselves at Grasmere, in the lake country. In 1800 he published the second volume of the Lyrical Ballads, and in 1802 he married Mary Hutchinson. From 1799 to 1814 he was mainly busy with his great philosophical poem, to be called "The Recluse," "containing views of Man, Nature, and Society," of which "The Prelude" was to be the introduction and "The Excursion" the Second and main Part. He designed that his minor pieces should be so arranged in connection with this work ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... from an unanalysed concept. Consequently they use the word "mind" with the imprudence of a banker who should discount a trade bill without ascertaining whether the payment of that particular piece of paper had been provided for. This amounts to saying that the discussion of philosophical problems takes especially a verbal aspect; and the more complex the phenomena a concept thus handled, contains, the more dangerous it is. A concept of the colour red has but a very simple content, and by using it, this content can ...
— The Mind and the Brain - Being the Authorised Translation of L'me et le Corps • Alfred Binet
... great, swamping wave of loneliness and homesickness. I've longed for three years to go to Redmond—and now I'm going—and I wish I weren't! Never mind! I shall be cheerful and philosophical again after I have just one good cry. I MUST have that, 'as a went'—and I'll have to wait until I get into my boardinghouse bed tonight, wherever it may be, before I can have it. Then Anne will be herself again. I wonder if Davy has come ...
— Anne Of The Island • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... life perused any article more philosophical in spirit or more conclusive in argument; the scheme was clearly shown not only to be absurd but impracticable, and the projectors proved either to be presumptuous imitators, or men profligately speculating upon the ignorant ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power
... attitude was more philosophical and better supported by statistics. He came into the room after Mrs. Seal's outburst and pointed out, with historical illustrations, that such reverses had happened in every political campaign of any importance. If anything, his spirits were improved by the disaster. The enemy, ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... material is only an imperfect representation of the same. The horse is a type to which all individual horses tend to conform; they pass away, but the type remains. His work was purely deductive. His major premise was accepted on faith rather than determined by his reason. Yet in philosophical speculations the immortality of the soul, future rewards and punishments, the unity of the creation and the unity of the creator, and an all-wise ruler of the universe, were among the most important ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... gentlemen, you will have no scruples on that score, for my work will be rather philosophical and general, than of the particular nature of private anecdotes. Saunders, hand me the manuscript journal you will find on the shelf of our state-room, next to Sir George's patent tooth-pick case. ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... general report of it to all, virtuously, braving Vendome and all his cabal. This cabal trembled with rage; Vendome still more so. They answered by miserable reasonings, which nobody cared for. This was what led to the suppression of his pay, and his retirement to Anet, where he affected a philosophical indifference. ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... of the Academy, which is impaired by reason of the large amount of time necessarily expended in giving new cadets a thorough knowledge of the more elementary branches of learning, which they should acquire before entering the Academy. Also an appropriation for philosophical apparatus and an increase in the numbers and pay ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Ulysses S. Grant • James D. Richardson
... is equally at home in literature and in dealing with social problems"; that "he is an explorer who has wandered afoot in China, Malaysia, and even the solitudes of Lapland." Nothing human is foreign to him. In his book, the chapters on universal history, religious history, and philosophical criticism, are closely linked with the chapters on ethnology and biology. What a contrast between this encyclopaedic thought, with its reminiscences of our eighteenth century France, and the German savant of caricature, specialist to absurdity—a ...
— The Forerunners • Romain Rolland
... it anyhow. If it's going to come I can't stop it; but I can enjoy it," Alice remarked in her characteristically philosophical way. ...
— The Moving Picture Girls Snowbound - Or, The Proof on the Film • Laura Lee Hope
... out of a horse all the energy of which he was capable. When I entered he was holding forth on the pretty well-worn theme of fate versus free will; his arguments were not, however, the usual dry philosophical ones, but took the form of illustration, chiefly personal reminiscences and strange incidents in the lives of people he had known, while so vivid and minute were his descriptions—sparkling with passion, satire, humour, pathos, and so dramatic his action, while wonderful ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... the sympathetic and emotional stages in his new experience, and had arrived at the philosophical and practical state, which takes things coolly, and goes to work to set them right. He had breadth enough of view to see that there was nothing so very exceptional in this educational trader's dealings with his subordinates, but he had also manly ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... 'Sociology' was invented by Herbert Spencer, a popular writer upon philosophical subjects, who flourished about the middle of the nineteenth century, but the idea of a state, planned as an electric-traction system is planned, without reference to pre-existing apparatus, upon scientific lines, did not take a very strong hold upon the popular imagination of the world ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... LL.D., the renowned American essayist and poet, was born in Boston, 1803. He graduated at Harvard in 1821, and was ordained to the Unitarian ministry, but turned his attention to literature, writing and lecturing on ethical and philosophical themes, and winning universal fame by his original and suggestive prose and verse. He died April ...
— The Story of the Hymns and Tunes • Theron Brown and Hezekiah Butterworth
... delightful style, the clear flow of the narrative, the philosophical tone, and the able analysis of men and events will commend Mr. Eggleston's work ...
— Admiral Farragut • A. T. Mahan
... on his hat, and rifled the pocket of his paletot of his cigar-case and matches, and spluttered a curse or two, according to old Nollekins' receipt for easing the mind, and on the door-steps lighted his cheroot, and became gradually more philosophical. ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... a freethinking nobleman who wrote A Philosophical Discourse on Death, in which he defended suicide, though he refrained from resorting to it himself. Pope refers to him in the Epilogue to the Satires, Dialogue ...
— De Libris: Prose and Verse • Austin Dobson
... looking-glass and you were sitting inside. Where would it stop reflecting your face and begin reflecting your back? The more one thinks about this problem, the more puzzling it becomes. You can see with what deep philosophical ...
— Daddy-Long-Legs • Jean Webster
... and about as strong, as in biology, where it is now made a presupposition of scientific explanation. So far from being unwelcome, I find it in psychology no less than in biology a great gain, both from the point of view of scientific knowledge and from that of philosophical theory. Every great law that is added to our store adds also to our conviction that the universe is run through with Mind. Even so-called Chance, which used to be the "bogie" behind Natural Selection, has now been found to illustrate—in the law of Probabilities—the absence of Chance. As Professor ...
— The Story of the Mind • James Mark Baldwin
... of the propositions and questions to be found in philosophical works are not false but nonsensical. Consequently we cannot give any answer to questions of this kind, but can only point out that they are nonsensical. Most of the propositions and questions of philosophers arise from our failure to understand the logic of our language. (They belong to the ...
— Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus • Ludwig Wittgenstein
... object of showing Columbus the importance of his discoveries, reverses the order of time, and exhibits the continent again in its savage state. He then displays the progress of arts in America. Fur-trade. Fisheries. Productions. Commerce. Education. Philosophical discoveries. Painting. Poetry. ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... take that risk; in any case, I shall be rid of uncertainty; and that is really my first object. Between ourselves, I am not risking as much as you think. It will take more than fifteen days for a son of Phellion, in other words, obstinacy incarnate in silliness, to have done with philosophical hesitations; and it is very certain that Celeste will not accept him for a husband unless he gives her some ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... his old comrade, Don John of Austria. His father forced him to an uncongenial marriage with Lucrezia d'Este, Princess of Ferrara. She left him, and took refuge in her native city, then honoured by the presence of Tasso and Guarini. He bore her departure with philosophical composure, recording the event in his diary as something to be dryly grateful for. Left alone, the Duke abandoned himself to solitude, religious exercises, hunting, and the economy of his impoverished dominions. He became that curious creature, a man of narrow nature and mediocre ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... to the sagacity and persistency of Toombs and his associates in 1840. The great possibilities of these iron highways opened the eyes of the statesmen of that day, Mr. Calhoun seemed to drop for a time his philosophical studies of States and slavery and to dream of railroads and commercial greatness. He proposed the connection of the Atlantic Ocean with the Mississippi River and the great West, through Cumberland Gap—a brilliant ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall
... realistic novels was published in the famous series "La Comedie Humaine." This in turn was divided into these seven parts: "Scenes of Private Life," "Life in the Provinces," "Life in Paris," "In Politics," "In the Army," "In the Country," with "Philosophical Studies" and "Studies in Analysis." In his preface of 1842, Balzac thus explained the ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... the poets there is room not only for Homer (to confine myself to the Greeks), or for Archilochus, or Sophocles, or Pindar, but there is room also for those who are second to them, or even below the second. Nor, indeed, did the nobleness of Plato in philosophical studies deter Aristotle from writing; nor did Aristotle himself, by his admirable knowledge and eloquence, extinguish the zeal in those pursuits of all ...
— The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Volume 4 • Cicero
... been suspected to have written "The Group." 2d. That there was but one person in the world, male or female, who could at that time, in my opinion, have written it; and that person was Madam Mercy Warren, the historical, philosophical, poetical, and satirical consort of the then Colonel, since General, James Warren of Plymouth, sister of the ...
— The Group - A Farce • Mercy Warren
... Near East during the last three centuries before the Christian era is the history of the gradual passing of Asiatic religions westward to occupy the Hellenic vacuum, and of Hellenic philosophical ideas eastward to supplement and purify the religious systems of West Asia. How far the latter eventually penetrated into the great Eastern continent, whether even to India or China, this is no place to discuss: how far the former would push westward is written in the modern history of Europe ...
— The Ancient East • D. G. Hogarth
... Papers, American Philosophical Society; a draft is in the Samuel Adams Papers, Lenox Library; a text is in W. V. Wells, Life of Samuel ...
— The Original Writings of Samuel Adams, Volume 4 • Samuel Adams
... you have al the windes of favour in your sail; account, that al doe follow; judgement, that al doe reverence; wisdom, that al admire; learning, that stupified our scholes hearing a king borne, from tuelfe yeeres ald alwayes occupyed in materes of state, moderat in theological and philosophical disputationes, to the admiration of all that hard him, and speciallie them quha had spent al ...
— Of the Orthographie and Congruitie of the Britan Tongue - A Treates, noe shorter than necessarie, for the Schooles • Alexander Hume
... question was a pertinent and in its way a truly philosophical one. Fiesole crests the ridge of a Tuscan hill, and in America they don't build cities on hill-tops. You may search through the length and breadth of the United States, from Maine to California, and I venture to bet a modest dollar ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... its own way in spite of our likes and dislikes, but Thoreau's likes and dislikes determined everything for him. He was stoical, but not philosophical. His intellect had no free play outside his individual predilection. Truth as philosophers use the term, was not his quest but truth made ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... next turned on the Philosophical Transactions, when Johnson observed that they had now a better method of arranging their materials than formerly. "Ay" (said the King), "they are obliged to Dr. Johnson for that"; for his Majesty had heard and remembered the ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... man bears in himself something of the mind of God, so each of these nominees of universal suffrage bore something of the soul of France; if it were possible to forget this for a moment, it assuredly would be a spectacle perhaps more laughable than sad, and certainly more philosophical than lamentable to see, on this December morning, after so many laws of repression, after so many exceptional measures, after so many votes of censure and of the state of siege, after so many refusals of amnesty, after so many affronts to equity, ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... de Castro, written by that philosophical lady, Catherine Trotter (afterwards Cockburn), at the early age of sixteen, and produced at the Theatre Royal, 1696, with Powell, Verbruggen, Mrs. Rogers in the principal parts, is directly founded upon Mrs. Behn. It is a mediocre play, and the same can even more truly ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... To the philosophical entomologists I have something else to say: I have to call their attention to the consummate knowledge of the insect-killers, which vies with that of the paralyzers. I speak of insect-killers in the plural, for the ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... Philosophical cognition is the cognition of reason by means of conceptions; mathematical cognition is cognition by means of the construction of conceptions. The construction of a conception is the presentation a priori of the intuition which corresponds to the conception. For this ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant
... passed on certain productions of Gower's in the Prologue to The Man of Law's Tale, it has been supposed that in the later years of Chaucer's life the friendship suffered some diminution. To the "moral Gower" and "the philosophical Strode," Chaucer "directed" or dedicated his "Troilus and Cressida;" while, in the "Confessio Amantis," Gower introduces a handsome compliment to his greater contemporary, as the "disciple and the poet" of Venus, with whose glad songs and ditties, made in her ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... great knowledge of Irish character I could see that trouble was brewing for somebody, but I resolved to be very backward, for I hesitated to create a genuine disturbance in these philosophical circles. However, I was saved this annoyance in a strange manner. The door opened, and a newcomer came in, bowing right and left to his acquaintances, and finally taking a seat near Fullbil. I recognized him instantly; ...
— The O'Ruddy - A Romance • Stephen Crane
... two reasons. One was philosophical. I wanted to give you my judgment, as I saw it, on some of the issues before our Nation, as I view ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... reflection on the fine system. It is merely the statement of a melancholy fact. The average state school, high or low, is absolutely colorless as to religion. Even the morality that is taught is not the morality of the Christian religion, but of philosophical ethics that differ but little from the ethics of ...
— The Choctaw Freedmen - and The Story of Oak Hill Industrial Academy • Robert Elliott Flickinger
... times into symbol and figure—but far too living and real, addressed with too intense and natural feeling, to be the mere personification of anything. The lady of the philosophical Canzoni has vanished. The student's dream has been broken, as the boy's had been; and the earnestness of the man, enlightened by sorrow, overleaping the student's formalities and abstractions, reverted in sympathy to the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... 1868 on "A Piece of Chalk." On the 17th and 24th he lectured at Birmingham on "Extinct Animals intermediate between Reptiles and Birds"—a subject which he had made peculiarly his own by long study; and on December 29 he was at Bradford, and lectured at the Philosophical Institute upon "The Formation of Coal" ("Collected ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... the possible ends for which it may be valuable, can never be helpful toward the fundamental solution of a problem. Nobody doubts that human progress is a worthy aim, and no one denies that human happiness is a beautiful goal. Hence we may evade the philosophical duty of proving through reasons that they are justified ends. We take them for granted, and we only insist that the one is not the other, and that it is utterly in vain to measure the value of socialism with reference to these two ideals, as long as we do not cleanly discriminate for ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... Surely it is not an evidence of laziness, my endeavouring to render these instruments of torture less tormenting? Seeking to be comfortable, if it does not inconvenience anyone else, is not laziness. Why, what is comfort?" The skipper began to wax philosophical at this point, and took the pipe from his mouth as he gravely propounded the momentous question. "What is comfort? If I go out to camp in the woods, and after turning in find a sharp stump sticking into my ribs on one side, and a pine root ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... to regard him as wholly disinterested in his conduct; it is unjust and absurd to regard him as a glorified Tartuffe.[152] Such a supposition is adequately refuted by his writings. It is easy for a writer at once so fluent and so brilliant to give the impression of insincerity; but the philosophical works of Seneca ring surprisingly true. We cannot doubt his faith, though his life may at times have belied it. He reveals a warmth of human feeling, a richness of imagination, a comprehension of human failings and sorrows, that make him rank high among the great preachers of the world. ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... of entities, to the slow accumulation and organization of cells in utero. He would make us specks in the insentient embryo of some gigantic Presence whose form is still unimaginable and whose birth must wait for Eons and Eons. Again, he turns to something not easily distinguishable from philosophical idealism, whether out of Berkeley or Fichte it is hard to make out—that is, he would interpret the whole phenomenon of life as no more than an appearance, a nightmare of some unseen sleeper or of men themselves, an "uncanny blur of nothingness"—in ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... and immense forests; a man angry, powerless, empty-handed, with a cry of bitter discontent ready on his lips; a cry that, had it come out, would have rung through the virgin solitudes of the woods, as true, as great, as profound, as any philosophical shriek that ever came from the depths of an easy-chair to disturb the impure wilderness of ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad
... three-dimensional wire diagram, at half scale, illustrating Thomas Jefferson's design of a plow mold-board as he described it in a letter to Sir John Sinclair in 1798. In the same year Jefferson read a paper to the American Philosophical Society that was titled "Description of a Mold-Board of the Least Resistance and of the Easiest and Most Certain Design." The wire diagram was constructed by the Division of ...
— Agricultural Implements and Machines in the Collection of the National Museum of History and Technology • John T. Schlebecker
... them far more philosophical to speculate on the possibilities of the past, than patiently to explore the realities of the present; and having invented theories under the influence of such maxims, they were consistently unwilling to test their validity by the criterion of ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... reverberator in the artillery of Herr Krupp von Bohlen; but the world is curiously indisposed to conversion by cannon, and has retorted in a still louder roar of high-explosive arguments. God, as a politico-philosophical ally, is certainly cheaper than Herr Krupp; and, divested of his mediaeval sword and tinder-box, he is decidedly humaner. But is the glamour of his name quite what it once was? Or can it be ...
— God and Mr. Wells - A Critical Examination of 'God the Invisible King' • William Archer
... connexion we cannot well pass over a third philosophical school which played no inconspicuous role in the latter half of our period, namely, Scepticism. The Sceptic philosophy as such dates from Socrates, from whom the so-called Megarian school took its origin, but it did not reach its greatest importance until ...
— Atheism in Pagan Antiquity • A. B. Drachmann
... stand and watch very long without becoming philosophical, without beginning to deal in symbols and similes, and to hear the hog squeal of the universe. Was it permitted to believe that there was nowhere upon the earth, or above the earth, a heaven for hogs, where they were requited ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... a high or conceited opinion of himself, should not be confused with egoist which is the name for a believer in a certain philosophical doctrine. ...
— Word Study and English Grammar - A Primer of Information about Words, Their Relations and Their Uses • Frederick W. Hamilton
... irregular, often blind and perverted, efforts; but still it studies—itself. And is not criticism, when it speaks, much bolder, more glowing and generous, ampler-spirited, more inspiring, and withal more enquiring and philosophical? During the whole period we speak of, poetry and criticism—in nature near akin—with occasional complaints and quarrels, have flourished amicably together, side by side. Both have been strong, healthy, and good. Prigs of both kinds—the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... returned with any hopes of political preferment: at least he made no attempt to enter the field of politics, but after spending several months in travel took up his residence in Washington and devoted himself to philosophical studies and the cultivation of the Muses. He had purchased a beautiful site on the banks of the Potomac within the city limits, and here he erected a mansion whose beauty and elegance made it famous throughout ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... Thoreau lived as a hermit in a hut which he had built on the shore of Walden Pond, and the simple life he led there gave him plenty of leisure for the things he liked best—the study of nature, the grappling with philosophical problems, and the society of friends. The result of the two years at Walden Pond was his best book, Walden, or Life in the Woods, a work which is distinguished for its peculiarly truthful and sympathetic studies ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... expression upon her face which changes it completely. Her countenance is like a landscape,—dull in winter, glorious in summer; but the world will always see it in winter. When she talks with friends on some literary or philosophical topic, or on certain religious questions which interest her, she is roused into appearing suddenly an unknown woman of ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac
... this. That Space, as our mathematicians have it, is spoken of as having three dimensions, which one may call Length, Breadth, and Thickness, and is always definable by reference to three planes, each at right angles to the others. But some philosophical people have been asking why three dimensions particularly—why not another direction at right angles to the other three?—and have even tried to construct a Four-Dimension geometry. Professor Simon Newcomb ...
— The Time Machine • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... Counting the philosophical modern Spiritualists we may say that the number of people in this country who, without knowing it, perhaps, are reasoning themselves into acceptance of Buddhistic teachings, may be placed in the hundreds of thousands. A modified, ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, December 1887 - Volume 1, Number 11 • Various
... the north. The tide was flowing in and covering the marsh lands. They gained the summit of Winter Hill, gazed upon the beautiful landscape, then turned southward toward Cambridge. Reaching the college, they entered the library and the room containing the philosophical instruments. Robert rubbed his knife on a magnet so he could pick up a needle by touching it with the blade. They had little time to spare, for they were to take supper with Mr. Samuel Adams. Berinthia informed him that Mr. Adams was not rich, that ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin
... at its own risk and peril that Utopia is converted into revolution, and from philosophical protest becomes an armed protest, and from Minerva turns ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... long before to coal-miners, from its fatal effects, was, from its being the lightest gas known, early taken advantage of for inflating balloons. It indeed occurred to the ingenious Dr. Black of Edinburgh, as soon as he read Mr. Cavendish's paper, which appeared in the Philosophical Transactions for 1766, that if a sufficiently thin and light bladder were filled with this gas, the bladder would necessarily ascend in the atmosphere, as it would form a mass lighter than the same bulk of atmospheric ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... 'Very philosophical! but as a matter of fact, what was it but the sense of my birth that kept me out of all the mischief I was exposed to at ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... it. My wife has not dined yet; she is busy, I suppose, in her philosophical meditations ...
— Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud, Complete - Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London • Lewis Goldsmith
... crisp mustache, and then returned to the delicate manipulation of a magnifying glass and a small blue bottle of acid. She left him for a deep chair and a surprising French romance by Remy de Gourmont. At a long philosophical dialogue the book drooped, and she thought of Anna ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... about ten minutes looking hard at the floor. Then he burst out laughing, resumed in a moment his air of philosophical opportunism, and set about a further search of the desk. He looked at the bills and seemed to find nothing more to interest him. Then he glanced at one or two letters in the drawers, threw the first few back again, and at ...
— The Lunatic at Large • J. Storer Clouston
... of 1761 and 1769 were observed, and orreries were constructed in different parts of the country; and some respectable scientific essays are contained and valuable observations are recorded in the early volumes of the Transactions of the Philosophical Society, at Philadelphia, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences at Boston and Cambridge. But in the absence of a numerous class of men of science to encourage and aid each other, without observatories and without valuable instruments, little of importance could be expected in the ...
— The Uses of Astronomy - An Oration Delivered at Albany on the 28th of July, 1856 • Edward Everett
... distinguished from the reasons which make it true. No logic of discovery. Many religious ideas have occurred in a spontaneous or apparently intuitive way to particular persons, the truth of which the philosopher may subsequently be able to test by philosophical reflection, though he could not have discovered them, but they are not necessarily true because they arise in a spontaneous or unaccountable manner, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ...
— Philosophy and Religion - Six Lectures Delivered at Cambridge • Hastings Rashdall
... opportunity to gobble up the goldfish. We took his part, however, and strenuously defended his moral character, and patronized him in all ways. We gave him the name of Unke, and maintained that he was a well-conducted, philosophical old water- sprite, who showed his good taste in wanting to take up his abode in our conservatory. We even defended his personal appearance, praised the invisible-green coat which he wore on his back, and his gray vest, and solemn ...
— Queer Little Folks • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... is now taking place, chiefly through inoculation (and I again repeat my earnest hope that it may be conducted with that calmness and moderation which should ever accompany a philosophical research), must soon place the vaccine disease in its just point of view. The result of all my trials with the virus on the human subject has been uniform. In every instance the patient who has felt its influence, has completely lost the susceptibility for ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... turns her attention to another phase of faith and of practical error in the guidance of souls to Christ. Her views on this vexed question are not extreme but philosophical and scriptural. She teaches that God has made the bestowment of salvation simultaneous with the exercise of faith, and that "telling a person to believe he is saved, before he is saved, is telling him to believe a lie." But she insists that the act of faith is put forth with the special aid ...
— Godliness • Catherine Booth
... These names mark the physical and intellectual coming of age of Germany. Lessing died misunderstood and feared by the card-board literary leaders of his day, men who still wrote and thought with the geometrical instruments handed them from France; Kant attempted to push philosophical inquiry beyond the bounds of human experience, and Frederick left Prussia at last not ashamed to be Prussia. Napoleon was eighteen years old when Frederick died, and he, next to Bismarck, did more to bring ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... anything she knew to the contrary, they might all be philosophers together, and a fitting match for Malcolm might be far more easy to find amongst them than in the society to which she herself belonged, where in truth the philosophical element was rare enough. Then arose in her mind, she could not have told how, the vision, half logical, half pictorial, of a whole family of brave, believing, daring, saving fisher folk, father, mother, boys and girls, each sacrificing to the rest, each sacrificed ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... out tons of rubbish from the chambers of his mind, and start his thinking life all over again. Just as, in early days, he had exchanged miracles and folk-tales for facts of natural science; so now he saw political institutions and social codes, literary and artistic canons, and ethical and philosophical systems, no longer as things valid and excellent, having relationship to truth—but simply as intrenchments and fortifications in the class-war, as devices which some men had used to deceive and plunder some other men. What a light it threw upon philosophy, for ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... praying relief. He represented that, after he left England with Count Laski, the mob had pillaged his house at Mortlake, accusing him of being a necromancer and a wizard; and had broken all his furniture, burned his library, consisting of four thousand rare volumes, and destroyed all the philosophical instruments and curiosities in his museum. For this damage he claimed compensation; and furthermore stated, that, as he had come to England by the Queen's command, she ought to pay the expenses of his journey. Elizabeth ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... that after I had been two years at the Bar, and acquired some reputation in the Forum, I left Rome. When I came to Athens, I spent six months with Antiochus, the principal and most judicious Philosopher of the old Academy; and under this able master, I renewed those philosophical studies which I had laboriously cultivated and improved from my earliest youth. At the same time, however, I continued my rhetorical Exercises under Demetrius the Syrian, an experienced and reputable master of the Art ...
— Cicero's Brutus or History of Famous Orators; also His Orator, or Accomplished Speaker. • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... sign board "Three Miles to Mason's Corner" was still there, but how changed the other conditions. No consumptive uncle in the Poor House, no philosophical Uncle Ike living in a chicken coop, no inquisitive Mrs. Putnam, no mysterious Lindy, no battle royal with the music teacher, no town meeting to engineer, no grocery store to buy, no Deacon's daughter to go driving with, no ...
— The Further Adventures of Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks • Charles Felton Pidgin
... possessed the singular powers of perceiving things as they really were. The spring, and consequence of action, were open to his view; whom we may justly deem the Shakespear or the Newton of his day. He rose from minute beginnings, to shine in the commercial hemisphere, as they in the poetical and philosophical—Imitation is part of the human character. An example of such eminence in himself, promoted exertion in others; which, when prudence guided the helm, led on to fortune: But the bold adventurer who crouded sail, without ballast and without rudder, has been known to overset the vessel, ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton
... the mysterious Senor Johnson, of whom he—still presumably—knew still less, had also disappeared. For Senor Mateo's knowledge of what transpired in and about his posada, and of the character and purposes of those who frequented it, was tinctured by grave and philosophical doubts. This courteous and dignified scepticism generally took the formula of quien sabe to all frivolous and mundane inquiry. He would affirm with strict verity that his omelettes were unapproachable, ...
— The Argonauts of North Liberty • Bret Harte
... prevent the forms of my father, my mother, two brothers, two sisters, and one other family I had learned to love as if it were my own, from all whom I was, doubtless, for ever cut off, from crossing my mind, and rendering all my philosophical reasoning of no avail. I was unable to resist the thought, and I wept ...
— My Ten Years' Imprisonment • Silvio Pellico
... EBERHARD, JOHANN AUGUST, German philosophical writer, born at Halberstadt; professor at Halle; rationalistic in his theology, and opposed to the Kantian metaphysics; was a disciple of Leibnitz; wrote a "New Apology of Socrates," in defence of rationalism in theology, as well ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... this Episcopal benediction were not given to the world till the next year. At the end of May or beginning of June, 1760, Sterne went to his new home at Coxwold, and his letters soon begin to show him to us at work upon further records of Mr. Shandy's philosophical theory-spinning and the simpler pursuits of his excellent brother. It is probable that this year, 1760, was, on the whole, the happiest year of Sterne's life. His health, though always feeble, had not yet finally given way; and though the "vile cough" which was to bring him more than once ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... European and Asiatic Finnish tribes, their grammar and vocabularies, with constant regard to the analogies of the Magyar tongue. By way of introduction he will first publish a special work, containing his philosophical views on the organism of language. After these philological treatises he will print a series of ethnographic works on the various races among which he has lived, with collections of their songs and traditions, and finally a detailed narrative of his travels, ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... Life of Benjamin Lundy" (Philadelphia, 1847), 16. The manuscript record is in the archives of the Ohio Historical and Philosophical Society. ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... philosophical religion thus broadly defined there is yet provision for almost endless variety of belief. Religions may still differ in tradition, symbolism, and ritual. They may differ as moral codes and sentiments differ, and reflect all shades of opinion as this ...
— The Moral Economy • Ralph Barton Perry
... employ different muscles, or different energies of the mind, some of which rest and are refreshed while others work. Bodily labor itself rests from mental, and conversely. The variety itself has an invigorating effect on what, for want of a more philosophical appellation, we must term the animal spirits—so important to the efficiency of all work not mechanical, and not ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • John Stuart Mill
... Another philosophical crotchet did no small mischief. It was alleged that hard labour on the tread-mill would do harm: knowing that the labour tended to no useful purpose but merely the turning of a wheel, prisoners would feel degraded, and this feeling would prevent their reclamation! ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 419, New Series, January 10, 1852 • Various
... now became general and at times highly philosophical in character, although Mr Bosher did not take much part, being too busily engaged gobbling up the biscuits and tea, and only occasionally spluttering out a reply when a remark or question ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... Germany, Persia from Egypt, Constantinople from Amsterdam. This has induced other writers to propose a third method and to trace Influences, to indicate that, whereas Rabbinism may be termed the native product of the Jewish genius, the scientific, poetical, and philosophical tendencies of Jewish writers in the Middle Ages were due to the interaction of external and internal forces. Further, in this arrangement, the Ghetto period would have a place assigned to it as such, for it would again mark the almost complete ...
— Chapters on Jewish Literature • Israel Abrahams
... first who undertook a philosophical survey of American religions was Dr. Samuel Farmer Jarvis, in 1819 (A Discourse on the Religion of the Indian Tribes of North America, Collections of the New York Historical Society, vol. iii., New York, 1821). He confined himself to the tribes north of Mexico, ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... feverish regrets which would occasionally arise and agitate him, when he indulged in visions of what might have been had he not hearkened to the whispers of conscience. He fixed his thoughts for so many hours a day on philosophical passages in the volumes he had brought with him, allowing himself now and then a few minutes' thought of Emmeline, with the strict yet reluctant niggardliness of an ailing epicure proportioning the rank drinks that cause his ...
— A Group of Noble Dames • Thomas Hardy
... competence to disentangle and explain phenomena a hundred-fold more complex than those of the solar system. Accept if you will the scepticism of Mr. Mill[19] regarding the undulatory theory; but if your scepticism be philosophical, it will wrap the theory of gravitation in the same or in ...
— Six Lectures on Light - Delivered In The United States In 1872-1873 • John Tyndall |
