"Theoretic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... offence ministered to the weak or to the sceptical by differences irreconcilable in the acts or the opinions of those whom they are bound to regard as spiritual authorities. Now here, in Scotland, is a feud past all arbitration: here is a schism no longer theoretic, neither beginning nor ending in mere speculation; here is a change of doctrine, on one side or the other, which throws a sad umbrage of doubt and perplexity over the pastoral relation of the church to every parish ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v2 • Thomas de Quincey
... then the Solutions of the Parties Outside the Church, Bishop Colenso on the Pentateuch, and Renan's 'Vie de Jesus.' Part II. gives us 'The Future Prospects of Religious Faith.' Under the head of Rational, we have the Rationalist Solution of the Problems, The Faith of the Future, Theoretic Theism, and Practical Theism. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... and reading, and boldly answers by suggesting five classes only: (1) science, (2) speculation, (3) art, (4) history, and (5) miscellaneous and periodical literature. But this seemingly simple division at once raises questions both of practical and of theoretic difficulty. As to the last, periodical literature is fast attaining to such magnitude, that it may require a classification of its own, and that the enumeration which indexes supply, useful as it is, will not suffice. And I fear it is the destiny of periodicals as such to carry down with them ...
— On Books and the Housing of Them • William Ewart Gladstone
... another question, however, whether this theoretic circulation, true cause as it may be, is competent to give rise to such movements of sea-water, in mass, as those currents, which have commonly been regarded as northern extensions of the Gulf-stream. I shall not venture to touch upon ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... that in its plain form it drags in the omniscient author and may make him exceedingly conspicuous. Why is this a disadvantage, is it asked? It is none, of course, if the author has the power to make us admire and welcome the apparition, or if his picture is so dazzling that a theoretic defect in it is forgotten. But a novel in which either of these feats is accomplished proves only the charm or genius of the author; charm and genius do what they will, there is nothing new in that. And I believe that the defect, even though at ...
— The Craft of Fiction • Percy Lubbock
... not thus according to aim, but according to method, then he takes rank among men of a very different type from these. What distinguishes him in method from his contemporaries is his discernment that the social order cannot be transformed until all the theoretic conceptions that belong to it have been rehandled in a scientific spirit, and maturely gathered up into a systematic whole along with the rest of our knowledge. This presiding doctrine connects Comte with the social thinkers of the eighteenth century,—indirectly with Montesquieu, directly with ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 10: Auguste Comte • John Morley
... worship of these foreign deities was accompanied with sensual excesses, which appealed to the strongest elementary passions of human nature. Feasts, dances and drunken orgies formed part of the worship of Baal and the other Canaanite divinities. Idolatry in Israel was never due to theoretic changes of opinion; it was only the way in which an outbreak of laxity and luxury manifested itself. Its equivalent in our day would be an excessive development of the passion for amusement and excitement, destroying the dignity and seriousness of life. The wealthy and fashionable classes led ...
— The Preacher and His Models - The Yale Lectures on Preaching 1891 • James Stalker
... atmospheric pressure the water below it, the atmospheric pressure on the water in the well, not being balanced by that on the water in the tube, forces the water higher up the tube, so that it follows the plunger. And now he sees why the water cannot be raised beyond the theoretic limit of 32 feet: a limit made much lower in practice by imperfections in the apparatus. For if, simplifying the conception, he supposes the tube of the pump to be a square inch in section, then the atmospheric pressure ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... predilections, endear or discommend it to his instinct. How hardly will poetry consent to employ such words as "congratulation" or "philanthropist,"—words of good origin, but tainted by long immersion in fraudulent rejoicings and pallid, comfortable, theoretic loves. How eagerly will the poetic imagination seize on a word like "control," which gives scope by its very vagueness, and is fettered by no partiality of association. All words, the weak and the strong, the definite ...
— Style • Walter Raleigh
... swimming, as to defy all present pursuit from man; this leviathan seems the banished and unconquerable Cain of his race, bearing for his mark that style upon his back. From having the baleen in his mouth, the Fin-Back is sometimes included with the right whale, among a theoretic species denominated WHALEBONE WHALES, that is, whales with baleen. Of these so called Whalebone whales, there would seem to be several varieties, most of which, however, are little known. Broad-nosed ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... because the friction set up between the individual and the community by the expression of unusual views of any sort is quite enough hindrance to the heretic without being complicated by personal scandals. Thus the theoretic libertine is usually a person of blameless family life, whilst the practical libertine is mercilessly severe on all other libertines, and excessively conventional ...
— Overruled • George Bernard Shaw
... or less complex article of food is in question, before considering it as a good nutriment, its centesimal composition, or its immediate composition, should be established; its theoretic calorific power should be known, and it should be measured if this has ...
— The Healthy Life, Vol. V, Nos. 24-28 - The Independent Health Magazine • Various
... I have to appeal to my theoretic preface at this third point of the drama of Shaw's career. On leaving school he stepped into a secure business position which he held steadily for four years and which he flung away almost in one day. He rushed ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... taking the aesthetic faculty away from the jurisdiction of Kant's rather mysterious 'judgment', and turning it over to the 'practical reason'. His argument is that the practical reason demands freedom, just as the 'pure' or theoretic reason demands rationality. Freedom is the form which the practical reason instinctively applies upon presentation of an object. It is satisfied when, and only when, the object is free, autonomous, self-determined. He ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... community could only be kept together if some of them restrained others, and so it appeared quite irreconcilable with the existing order of society. Moreover it was at first expressed only fragmentarily, and so obscurely that though people admitted its theoretic truth they could not entirely accept it as guidance for their conduct. Then, too, the dissemination of the truth in a society based on coercion was always hindered in one and the same manner, namely, those in power, feeling ...
— A Letter to a Hindu • Leo Tolstoy
... stuff, We often talk in institutes, we've lost the power to bluff; Perhaps 'twas Pestalozzi, Froebel and John Herbart Who robbed the wand of Skinny of its pedagogic art; We'll not discuss philosophy, but we know about the chalk, That no theoretic dream of man can ...
— The Loom of Life • Cotton Noe
... motion the disk was competent to drag after it, not only a light needle, but a heavy magnet. The question had been probed and investigated with admirable skill by both Arago and Ampere, and Poisson had published a theoretic memoir on the subject; but no cause could be assigned for so extraordinary an action. It had also been examined in this country by two celebrated men, Mr. Babbage and Sir John Herschel; but it still remained a mystery. Faraday always recommended the suspension ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various
... United States. But when the laws of war are in force, what, I ask, is one of those laws? It is this: that when a country is invaded, and two hostile armies are set in martial array, the commanders of both armies have power to emancipate all the slaves in the invaded territory. Nor is this a mere theoretic statement. The history of South America shows that the doctrine has been carried into practical execution within the last thirty years. Slavery was abolished in Columbia, first, by the Spanish General Morillo, and, ...
— The Abolition Of Slavery The Right Of The Government Under The War Power • Various
... to such military matters as the governor appointed. Although, as I have said, my military commission had been a nominal thing, and in fact I had never worn a uniform, I had not wholly neglected theoretic preparation for such work. For some years the possibility of a war of secession had been one of the things which would force itself upon the thoughts of reflecting people, and I had been led to give some careful study to such books of tactics ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... would affect the prisoner, all the various concurrent proofs should overpower him like a storm of hail." This is held particularly true in cases where crimes are secret, and detection difficult. The necessity of detecting and punishing such crimes superseded, in the soundest authors, this theoretic aim at perfection, and obliged technical science to submit to practical expedience. "In re criminali," said the rigorists, "probationes debent esse evidentes et luce meridiana clariores": and so undoubtedly it is in offences which ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... the vocation of Plato to set up a standard of unchangeable reality, which in its highest theoretic development becomes the world of "eternal and immutable ideas," indefectible outlines of thought, yet also the veritable things of experience: the perfect Justice, for instance, which if even the gods mistake it for perfect Injustice is not ...
— Plato and Platonism • Walter Horatio Pater
... in which, as it seems to me, time ought not to enter into our theoretic philosophical thought, may be illustrated by the philosophy which has become associated with the idea of evolution, and which is exemplified by Nietzsche, pragmatism, and Bergson. This philosophy, on the basis of the development which has led from ...
— Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays • Bertrand Russell
... moods, was capable of deducing his whole practical system from the abstract rights of man; Godwin was a modern in virtually dismissing the whole notion. While Burke was belabouring Dr. Price, he whittled away the whole theoretic significance of the English Revolution of 1688, but he remained its partisan. He tried to deny Dr. Price's claim to "choose our governors," but he could not relapse into the seventeenth-century Tory doctrine of non-resistance, ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford
... Socialists, who have sacrificed the idea of liberty and embraced the State and politics. The struggle is bitter, the factions irreconcilable. This struggle is not merely between Anarchists and Socialists; it also finds its echo within the Anarchist groups. Theoretic differences and personal controversies lead to strife and acrimonious enmities. The anti-Socialist legislation of Germany and Austria had driven thousands of Socialists and Anarchists across the seas to seek refuge in America. John Most, having lost his ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman
... than the gods of the state as the painter is older than the picture; if the question related to making the gods anew, it would certainly be well to make and to name them after a manner more befitting and more in theoretic accordance with the parts of the world-soul, and to lay aside the images of the gods which only excited erroneous ideas,(11) and the mistaken system of sacrifice; but, since these institutions had been once established, every good citizen ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... of the betalked-of Corregidor himself; while by the totality of these concrete images an impression is conveyed of the dramatic mode of poetic expression which is far more convincing than any explicit theoretic statement of it could be, because ...
— Men and Women • Robert Browning
... as a diaper of coloured shapes; and for this reason I say that he was not a painter born. If this be true, as a painter he must have been at a disadvantage. In this preponderance of the draughtsman qualities he resembles many artists of the Florentine school, as also in his theoretic pre-occupation with perspective, proportion, architecture, and technical methods. We are impressed by a coldness of approach, an austerity, a dignity not altogether justified by the occasion, but as it were carried over from some precedent hour of spiritual ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... of assimilation and the assertion of difference. So long as we ignore difference, so long as we ignore individuality, and that I hold has been the common sin of all Utopias hitherto, we can make absolute statements, prescribe communisms or individualisms, and all sorts of hard theoretic arrangements. But in the world of reality, which—to modernise Heraclitus and Empedocles—is nothing more nor less than the world of individuality, there are no absolute rights and wrongs, there are no qualitative questions at all, but only quantitative ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... text-book of a somewhat later date, the System der vergleichenden Anatomie (i., 1821), he works out the idea again and gives to it a much wider theoretic sweep, hinting that the development of the individual is a repetition of the evolutionary history of the race. Meckel was a timid believer in evolution. He thought it quite possible that much of ...
— Form and Function - A Contribution to the History of Animal Morphology • E. S. (Edward Stuart) Russell
... and theoretic side of the question. A few words as to the general tone and purpose of the play. For some reason unexplained, having selected his characters, which one may almost say exhibit every form of love except a wholesome and a human one, the author deemed it necessary that the whole ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... dumb as unfee'd lawyers. I knew that their information was not worth a groat, and hurried back to the Albergo to assure myself that my neighbour with the necklace had sailed also. To my surprise, he was at breakfast when I arrived at the hotel; and so one great link in my theoretic chain snapped at the first test. As he had not sailed with the others, he could have no direct connection with the nameless ship, no nautical part or lot with her. But what was he, then? That I meant to know as soon as opportunity ...
— The Iron Pirate - A Plain Tale of Strange Happenings on the Sea • Max Pemberton
... edition, pp. 159, et seq.) "Though Krafft-Ebing may not have cleared up the whole matter," Moll remarks, "I regard his deductions concerning the connection of foot-and-shoe fetichism to masochism as the most important progress that has been made in the theoretic study of sexual perversions.... In any case, the connection is very frequent." (Kontraere Sexualempfindung, third edition, ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... Witness my own case, who read every page of it with delight. It is a reasonable contention that a writer possessing the enthusiasm, the humour and the persuasive gifts of Mr. IONIDES, with a twelve-and-sixpenny book for their display, could present a case that would give some theoretic and superficial charm to the most uncomfortable conditions of existence. Not that A Floating Home is a work only of theory; on the contrary, nothing could be more practical than its account of the purchase, conversion ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Jan. 1, 1919 • Various
... Christianity, made the solicitudes of feminine fashion appear an occupation for Bedlam. She could not reconcile the anxieties of a spiritual life involving eternal consequences, with a keen interest in gimp and artificial protrusions of drapery. Her mind was theoretic, and yearned by its nature after some lofty conception of the world which might frankly include the parish of Tipton and her own rule of conduct there; she was enamoured of intensity and greatness, and rash in embracing whatever seemed to her to have those aspects; likely to seek martyrdom, ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... We formerly hazarded some observations, on this subject, which may properly claim regard, if the concurrent opinion of Cook be any commendation. It is rare with him to venture on theoretic conjectures; but his truly excellent remarks, so indicative of candid and unbiassed enquiry, may justly serve as the basis of very extensive reasoning. His professional career, in short, may be considered as a course of experimental investigations, from ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... understands—the dog-whip of the constable! Given in a country a majority of creatures like these, and surely despotism is its properest complement. But when they exist, as they exist in England to-day, in hundreds of thousands, in town and country, think what a complication they introduce into your theoretic free system of government. Acts of Parliament passed by a "freely-elected" House of Commons, and an hereditary House of Lords under the threats of freely-electing citizens, however pure in intention and correct in principle, ...
— Ginx's Baby • Edward Jenkins
... another, or their operation, whether simultaneous or successive, upon the material which is presented to them? He may long to do this to satisfy his curiosity; he may desire to do it to improve his theoretic knowledge; ... but for the purpose of ascertaining the existence of counsel and design in the formation of the machine, he wants no such intromission or privity. The effect upon the material, the change produced in it, the utility of ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... the area in square inches does to three times the circumference. But in general, no other rule is observed for the thickness of the heads, than to make them extravagantly heavy, without much regard to theoretic calculation. ...
— Scientific American magazine, Vol. 2 Issue 1 • Various
... not always been to Buxton? What would their landlady say? How could they ever look her in the face again? Besides ... well ...! They went to Llandudno, rather scared, and hardly knowing how the change had come about. But they went. And it was the force of Cyril's will, Cyril the theoretic cypher, that took them. ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... School can do for us, is still but what the first School began doing,—teach us to read. We learn to read, in various languages, in various sciences; we learn the alphabet and letters of all manner of Books. But the place where we go to get knowledge, even theoretic knowledge, is the Books themselves! It depends on what we read, after all manner of Professors have done their best for us. The true University of these days is a Collection ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... questionings. Under such conditions, a belief in evil spirits ever ready and watching to tempt a man into heresy of belief or sinful act, and thus to destroy both body and soul, although it may exist as a theoretic portion of the accepted creed, cannot possibly become a vital doctrine to be believed by the general public. It may exist as a subject for learned dispute to while away the leisure hours of divines, but cannot by any ...
— Elizabethan Demonology • Thomas Alfred Spalding
... government, giving to the inhabitants the comforts and conveniences of municipal and industrial life at a reasonable charge, the narrow electoral basis on which it rested would have remained little more than a theoretic grievance, and the bulk of the people would have cared nothing for political rights. An exclusive government may be pardoned if it is efficient, an inefficient government if it rests upon the people. But a government which is ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... would not be hostile to the Church. No doubt need be entertained as to the result of such an appeal in the case of the House of Lords. The constitution of the House as an assembly of hereditary legislators is admitted to be indefensible. Its theoretic prerogatives are tolerated only on the understanding that they shall never be exerted. It exists by virtue of habit and indifference, aided by a conviction of its powerlessness. As a decorative institution there is no great eagerness to pull it down, but whenever the House forgets that its ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various
... done. Require not, however shrewd your guess, my acknowledgment of this brain-child; forgive all unintended harms; supply what is lacking in my charities; politically, socially, authorially, think that I bigotize in theoretic fun, but am incarnate Tolerance for practical earnest. And so, giving your character fairer credit than if I feared you as one of those captious cautious people who make a man offender for an ill-considered word; commending ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... interfere. Nothing short of a constitutional declaration can decide the question; which is, in fact, an important one, and is growing more and more so to the country in proportion as the towns and villages increase in numbers and population. For, independent of the theoretic question, it is evident that the admission of these votes gives a vast advantage to the thickly settled places over the more ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... solemnity and pathos to these reflections to remember that every considerate person in the unnumbered successions that have preceded us, has, in his turn, confronted the same facts, engaged in the same inquiry, and been swept from his attempts at a theoretic solution of the problem into the real solution itself, while the constant refrain in the song of existence sounded behind him, "One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh; but the earth abideth forever." The evanescent phenomena, the tragic plot and ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... aimed not at shewing that an alliance with France would be foolish, but that it would be wrong. Five years before, Bismarck would have spoken as Gerlach did; but in these years he had seen and learnt much; he had freed himself from the influence of his early friends; he had outgrown their theoretic formalism; he had learned to look at the world with his own eyes, and to him, defending his country against the intrigues of weaker and the pressure of more powerful States, the world was a different place from what it was ...
— Bismarck and the Foundation of the German Empire • James Wycliffe Headlam
... Executive Committee condemn the authors of the appeal and not condemn the editor of the Liberator also? If strict military justice were done should not both parties be cashiered? Let the Sabbath and the theoretic theology of the priesthood alone for the present." "I could have wished, yes, I have wished from the bottom of my soul," it is Wright who now holds the pen, "that you could conduct that dear paper, the ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... its theoretic and perceptive side, morality touches science; on its emotional side, art. Now the products of art are great in proportion as they result from that immediate prompting of innate power which we call genius, and not from labored ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... could not honestly advise his entering upon another term. It would only be a deplorable throwing away of money on a useless scheme. His son Michael had no thoroughness, no practical ability, and no grasp whatever of theoretic detail. From Herr Harrison's point of view this was the more regrettable inasmuch as the young man had colossal decision and persistence and energy of his own. He was an indefatigable dreamer. Very likely—when his dreams had crystallized—a poet. ...
— The Tree of Heaven • May Sinclair
... of penny-a-lining gossip; and myself, my person, and my works of art, butchered to make a holiday for the readers of a Sunday paper. Night had fallen over the Genius of Muskegon before the issue of my theoretic eloquence was stayed, nor did I separate from my new friend without an ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... inverse experience. The theoretic reasons for certain limits to the rule of veracity appear to me unanswerable; nor can I condemn any one who acts in accordance with them. Yet when I place myself in a like position, at one of the crises demanding a deliberate lie, an unutterable repugnance returns upon me, ...
— A Lie Never Justifiable • H. Clay Trumbull
... is not surprising that they should have believed this to be the case, when increasing familiarity with the priestly seminaries revealed to them the existence of those libraries of clay tablets in which, side by side with theoretic treatises dating from two thousand years back and more, were to be found examples of applied mechanics, observations, reckonings, and novel solutions of problems, which generations of scribes had accumulated in the course of centuries. The Greek astronomers ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 9 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... restore the Scottish schools to the Scottish people, as represented by the majority, and to the membership of the Free Church, in the de facto statistical sense and proportion in which the Free Church is national. It will not restore them to us in the theoretic sense; but then there are at least three other true original Churches of Scotland, which in that respect will be greatly worse off than ourselves,—the true national Cameronian Church, the true national Episcopalian Church, and a true compact little Church of the whole nation, that, in the form ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... neither abstract and logical minds like that of Cornewall Lewis, nor bureaucratic intelligences like Stephen's, could do more than intensify the difficulty and emphasize it. The deus ex machina must appear and solve the preliminary or theoretic difficulties by overriding them. There are some who describe the pioneers of Canadian self-government as philosophic radicals; but they were really not of that school. It was through the absence of any philosophy or rigid logic ...
— British Supremacy & Canadian Self-Government - 1839-1854 • J. L. Morison
... they were hurried and tried, was a Mr. Cumberland Vane, a cheerful, middle-aged gentleman, honourably celebrated for the lightness of his sentences and the lightness of his conversation. He occasionally worked himself up into a sort of theoretic rage about certain particular offenders, such as the men who took pokers to their wives, talked in a loose, sentimental way about the desirability of flogging them, and was hopelessly bewildered by the fact that the wives seemed even more angry with him than with their husbands. ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... indeed, that some honest men fear that a republican government cannot be strong; that this government is not strong enough. But would the honest patriot, in the full tide of successful experiment, abandon a government which has so far kept us free and firm, on the theoretic and visionary fear, that this government, the world's best hope, may, by possibility, want energy to preserve itself? I trust not. I believe this, on the contrary, the strongest government on earth. I believe it ...
— American Eloquence, Volume I. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... appears at any rate that Mr. Ricardo's must be a most improper book as an elementary one. But, after all, you will admit that even amongst Mr. Ricardo's friends there is a prevailing opinion that he is too subtle (or, as it is usually expressed, too theoretic) a writer to be safely relied on for the practical ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... phenomena of political economy have a suppleness, an elasticity, and, so to speak, a self-levelling power, which seems to escape the attention of the school of protectionists. They accuse us of being theoretic, but it is themselves who are so to a supreme degree, if the being theoretic consists in building up systems upon the experience of a single fact, instead of profiting by the experience of a series of facts. In the above example, it is the difference in the value of lands which compensates ...
— What Is Free Trade? - An Adaptation of Frederic Bastiat's "Sophismes Econimiques" - Designed for the American Reader • Frederic Bastiat
... pamphlets which furnished no quotable extracts, but none that diverged in tone from the rest, or marred the majestic unison of German self-laudation and contempt for the rest of the world. I have read of (but not seen) a book by one F.W. Foerster which is said to contain a protest against theoretic war-worship, and even a mild defence of England. How very mild it is we may judge from this sentence: "England has given us not only men like Lord Grey, scoundrels and hypocrites, who have this war upon their conscience; it has also given us the ...
— Gems (?) of German Thought • Various
... the publication of the Reflections he himself perceived the narrowness of that judgment. In the Thoughts on French Affairs (1791) he saw that the essence of the Revolution was its foundation in theoretic dogma. It was like nothing else in the history of the world except the Reformation; which last event it especially resembles in its genius for self-propagation. Herein he has already envisaged the importance of that "patrie intellectuelle" ...
— Political Thought in England from Locke to Bentham • Harold J. Laski
... ... Let's better ride to the girlies, that will be nearer the mark," said peremptorily Lichonin, an old student, a tall, stooping, morose and bearded fellow. By convictions he was an anarchist—theoretic, but by avocation a passionate gambler at billiards, races and cards—a gambler with a very broad, fatalistic sweep. Only the day before he had won a thousand roubles at macao in the Merchants' Club, and this money was still burning ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... living on this practical Earth, should think to save themselves and a ruined world by noisy theoretic demonstrations and laudations of the Church, instead of some unnoisy, unconscious, but practical, total, heart-and-soul demonstration of a Church: this, in the circle of revolving ages, this also was a thing we were to see. A kind of penultimate thing, precursor of ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... surprising new philosophy, reluctant to disturb too early the fine intelligence of the pupil entrusted to him, had found it, perhaps, a matter of honesty to send back to his parents one likely enough to catch from others any sort of theoretic light; for the letter he wrote dwelt much on the lad's intellectual fearlessness. "At present," he had written, "he is influenced more by curiosity than by a care for truth, according to the character of the young. Certainly, ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Pater
... over his ship. His crew was by no means depressed. There had been a terrific lift in spirits when dummy-warheaded missiles made theoretic hits, though fifteen interceptors tried to stop them. The crewmen now tended elaborately to explain the process. A part of the trick was the curved path along which the re-set missiles flashed. Such courses alone could never be computed by an unwarned enemy under battle conditions. ...
— Talents, Incorporated • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... all assent to the first proposition. For culture certainly means something quite different from learning or technical skill. It implies the possession of an ideal, and the habit of critically estimating the value of things by comparison with a theoretic standard. Perfect culture should supply a complete theory of life, based upon a clear knowledge alike of its possibilities ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley
... negation, of theoretic insecurity, which was in the air, conspiring with what was of like tendency in himself, made of Lord UFFORD a central type of disillusion. . . . He had been amiable because the general betise of humanity did not in his opinion greatly matter, after all; and in reading these 'SATIRES' ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... charges, Crato; I suppose you have been getting up this subject for some time. You are not content with attacking the whole pantomimic art, practical and theoretic; we too, the pleased spectators thereof, come in for our share: we have been lavishing our admiration, it seems, on effeminate triflers. And now let me show you how completely you have been mistaken; you will find that the art you have been maligning ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... the first school began doing—teach us to read. We learn to read in various languages, in various sciences; we learn the alphabet and letters of all manner of books. But the place where we are to get knowledge, even theoretic knowledge, is the books themselves. It depends on what we read, after all manner of professors have done their best for us. The true university of these days is ...
— Many Thoughts of Many Minds - A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age • Various
... been graduates of some first-class military academy; I only say it was found not to be absolutely necessary to their success as great generals; and in our later wars, we have not found the graduates of West Point, who had a great theoretic knowledge of the science of war, more successful in action than the volunteers, whose only school was actual practice in the field. And look at our Senate and House of Representatives, sir; are the most distinguished statesmen ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... a burning controversy in the abstract and logical manner suitable to the discussion of the problems of jurisprudence savours, it may be objected, of theoretic, academic, or pedantic disquisition more fit for a University class-room than for the ...
— England's Case Against Home Rule • Albert Venn Dicey
... good purpose. Was it not righteously executed? Away from the tragic figure in the room, she might have thought so, but the horror in the eyes and voice of this awakened Sacrifice, struck away the support of theoretic justification. Great pity for the poor enmeshed life, helpless there, and in a woman's worst peril,—looking either to madness, or to death, for an escape—drowned her reason in a heavy cloud of tears. Long on toward the stroke of the hour, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... were as well acquainted, at least, with all the general theories concerning the "rights of men" as any of the discoursers in our pulpits or on your tribune: full as well as Dr. Price, or as the Abbe Sieyes. But, for reasons worthy of that practical wisdom which superseded their theoretic science, they preferred this positive, recorded, hereditary title to all which can be dear to the man and the citizen to that vague, speculative right which exposed their sure inheritance to be scrambled for and torn to pieces by ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... his skill were very evenly balanced; he was what you might call a scholarly doctor, and yet there was nothing abstract in his remedies—he always ordered you to take something. Though he was felt to be extremely thorough, he was not uncomfortably theoretic, and if he sometimes explained matters rather more minutely than might seem of use to the patient, he never went so far (like some practitioners one has heard of) as to trust to the explanation alone, but always left behind him an inscrutable prescription. ...
— Washington Square • Henry James
... and that it is not only possible but probable that the factors which make for peace may one day gain the upper hand of those which (for perfectly definite and tangible reasons) have hitherto made for war. The fact remains, however, that he shouldered his knapsack without any theoretic distaste for the soldier's calling. In so far he was more happily situated than thousands who have made all the better soldiers for their intense detestation of the stupidity of war. But this in no way detracts from his loyalty to his personal ideal, or from the high chivalry ...
— Poems • Alan Seeger
... and sore contusions, to the ground. Some will parade an ancient theory of morals, and introduce to us with all the pride of fresh discovery what now looks "as pale and hollow as a ghost." Others explain the beautiful; and with a charming audacity, a courage that is quite exhilarating, propound some theoretic fancy which has the same relation to philosophy that Quarle's Emblems bear to that pictorial art they especially delight to descant upon. But the greater number of these belated wanderers in the paths of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... intrinsic light of action, which is action itself so far as it is luminous. Thus there is no question here of restricting in any degree the part played by thought, but only of distinguishing between the perceptive and theoretic functions of mind. ...
— A New Philosophy: Henri Bergson • Edouard le Roy
... applied to the signs of the times, he knows and can show that the end of the present age is imminent (i. 5, 7-iv.). The burden of his epistle, then, is, "Let us become [v.03 p.0409] spiritual, a perfect temple unto God" (iv. 11); and that not only by theoretic insight, but also by practical wisdom of life. In order to enforce this moral, he passes to "another sort of gnosis and instruction" (xviii. i), viz. the precepts of the "Two Ways," cited in a slightly different form from that found in the first part of the Teaching ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... have seen only a part of the work of dissociation and, taking it all in all, the smallest part. We have, seemingly, considered images as isolated facts, as psychic atoms; but that is a purely theoretic position. Images are not solitary in actual life; they form part of a chain, or rather of a woof or net, since, by reason of their manifold relations they may radiate in all directions, through all the senses. Dissociation, then, works also upon series, cuts them up, mangles them, ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... thus assigned to inquiry is very significant of the theoretic precipitancy which is one of Dr. Draper's prominent characteristics. His mind is afflicted with that disease which physicians call "premature digestion." Inquiry, which is the perpetual tap-root of science, he separates wholly from science, stigmatizes it as the mere token ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... science, which from that time on, for many centuries, growing with the ages, claimed in chief part the intellectual activity of Jewry. The schools and the academies worked out a system of laws at once religious and practical in character, which constituted, in turn, the object of further theoretic study in the same schools and academies. In the course of time, however, the means became the end. Theoretic investigation of the law, extending and developing to the furthest limits, in itself, without reference to its practical value, afforded satisfaction to the spiritual need. ...
— Jewish History • S. M. Dubnow
... sought to render clear a difficult but profoundly interesting subject. My aim has been not only to describe and illustrate in a familiar manner the principal laws and phenomena of light, but to point out the origin, and show the application, of the theoretic conceptions which underlie and unite the whole, and without which no ...
— Six Lectures on Light - Delivered In The United States In 1872-1873 • John Tyndall
... labour is, above all, remarkable for his theoretic researches. Already, in 1714, he had discovered the combination tones (the so-called "third" or Tartini's tone). This discovery, a lasting and valuable acquisition to all later investigations into acoustics, led him further ...
— Among the Great Masters of Music - Scenes in the Lives of Famous Musicians • Walter Rowlands
... observation, proclaimed to them as a law—a scientific law—which from its nature admits of no exception; at finding it stated that every branch of human knowledge must of necessity pass through these three theoretic stages. In the case of some branches of knowledge, it is impossible to point out what can be understood as its several theologic and metaphysic stages; and even in cases where M. Comte has himself applied these terms, it is extremely difficult ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXIX. - March, 1843, Vol. LIII. • Various
... greater potential utility than any work which these institutions can do amongst adults. This is a mistake. The thousands of young men who are now being trained for advanced farming too often have to restrict the practical application of their theoretic knowledge to the home circle, which is not always responsive, for a man is not usually a prophet in his own family. It is here that the educational value of cooperative societies comes in; they act as agencies through which scientific ...
— The Rural Life Problem of the United States - Notes of an Irish Observer • Horace Curzon Plunkett
... White's arguments in support of his opinion are theoretic; the examples by which he endeavors to sustain it tell, with one exception, against him. That exception is his quoting from one of Shakspeare's sonnets the rhyme doting and nothing. But this proves nothing (noting?); for we have already ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... failed, the worst possibilities of her character came into prominence. Like a creature that is beset by unrelenting forces, she summoned and surveyed all the craft faculties lurking in the dark places of her nature; theoretic y she had now accepted every debasing compact by which a woman can spite herself on the world's injustice. Self-assertion; to be no longer an unregarded atom in the mass of those who are born only to labour for others; to find play for the strength ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... of Rhyme. He had companions in the critical task; but it is curious and by no means uninstructive to notice, that the immense creative production of the time seems to have to a great extent smothered the theoretic and critical tendency which, as yet not resulting in actual performance, betrayed itself at the beginning of the period in Webbe and Puttenham, in Harvey and Sidney. The example of Eden in collecting and Englishing travels and voyages was followed by several writers, of whom two, ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... interest in the religious part of the controversy. As strangers in the land, it is presumable that they wisely and honorably avoided entangling themselves in the political contentions involved with it. Yet the theoretic principles, as they were drawn into discussion, could not fail to arrest their attention, and must have assisted them to form accurate ideas concerning the origin and extent of authority among men, independent of positive institutions. The ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... of education is obviously not a mental process. When a mother talks to a baby, she is not encouraging its little mind to think. When she is coaxing her child to walk, she is not making a theoretic exposition of the science of equilibration. She crouches before the child, at a little distance, and spreads her hands. "Come, baby—come to mother. Come! Baby, walk! Yes, walk! Walk to mother! Come along. A little walk to its mother. Come! Come then! Why yes, a pretty baby! ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence
... gone into the subject of Science and its attempted positiveness, and its resistances in that it must have relations of service. It is very easy to see that most of the theoretic science of the 19th century was only a relation of reaction against theologic dogma, and has no more to do with Truth than has a wave that bounds back from a shore. Or, if a shop girl, or you or I, should pull out a piece of chewing gum about a yard long, ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... of Messrs. Cook or Gaze, 'do' Paris in three days, are often puzzled to know how it is that the dinner which in London would cost about six shillings, can be had for three francs in a cafe in the Palais Royal. They need have no more wonder if they will but consider the classification which is a theoretic speciality of Parisian life, and adopt all round the fact from which ...
— Dracula's Guest • Bram Stoker
... establishes the fundamental equality of all living things. It makes the killing of an animal murder in exactly the same sense as the killing of a man is murder. It is sometimes necessary to kill men as it is always necessary to kill tigers; but the old theoretic distinction between the two acts has been obliterated by Evolution. When I was a child and was told that our dog and our parrot, with whom I was on intimate terms, were not creatures like myself, but were brutal whilst I was reasonable, I not only did not believe ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... exist, but others, e.g. for honour and power, are equally operative and equally liable to concealment. This, however, does not affect the value of their general theories from the point of view of theoretic psychology, and it is from this point of view that their results are important for ...
— The Analysis of Mind • Bertrand Russell
... remember that it was not rational science, nor the ethics of law, which established the a priori rules of a just and free society, but the necessities of society itself led to the a posteriori formulation of laws. Theoretic science subsequently explained these laws, and perfected their form and organism, infusing into them a nobler purpose; but it was the necessities of nature which first dictated the balance, system, and harmony of the alliances and associations of materials and phenomena as they now exist, ...
— Myth and Science - An Essay • Tito Vignoli
... salutary discipline which visits on all conduct, good and bad, the natural consequences—the consequences, pleasurable or painful, which in the nature of things such conduct tends to bring. Being thus without theoretic guidance, and quite incapable of guiding herself by tracing the mental processes going on in her children, her rule is impulsive, inconsistent, mischievous; and would indeed be generally ruinous were it not that the overwhelming tendency of the growing ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... bad. There is no need to tell the majority of modern young men even to live up to the theoretical ethics of Henry Fielding. They would suddenly spring into the stature of archangels if they lived up to the theoretic ethics of poor Tom Jones. Tom Jones is still alive, with all his good and all his evil; he is walking about the streets; we meet him every day. We meet with him, we drink with him, we smoke with him, we talk ...
— All Things Considered • G. K. Chesterton
... anticipated that the items of income would be stated to the completion of the story. The affairs of the busy world were discarded, not upon the strength of large accumulated savings or the possession of means by inheritance or by the success of investments or by mere luck, but upon merely imperative, theoretic anticipations upon the cost of living the secluded life. We had little in reserve, how little it would be unbecoming to say. Our theories proved delusive, though not bewildering. Some of the things abandoned with unphilosophic ease at the outset proved under the test of experience ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... time. The body of civilization was one, and we wonder, at first, why its moral unity did not continue to be represented by a central Monarch. Though the civilization continued to decline, its forms should, one would think, have remained unchanged and the theoretic attachment of each of these subordinates to the Roman Emperor at Constantinople should have endured indefinitely. As a fact, the memory of the old central authority of the Emperor was gradually forgotten; the Rex ...
— Europe and the Faith - "Sine auctoritate nulla vita" • Hilaire Belloc
... theoretic doctrines of Buddhism "Buddhas"[1] are beings who appear after intervals of inconceivable extent; they undergo transmigrations extending over vast spaces of time, accumulating in each stage of existence an increased degree of merit, till, in their ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... are his show-box—a friend, would you know him? Pull the string, ruling passion the picture will show him. What pity, in rearing so beauteous a system, One trifling particular, truth, should have miss'd him; For spite of his fine theoretic positions, Mankind is a ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... the doctrines for which I contend, in theory, and even strenuously defending them, and yet setting them at naught in practice. Surely, say they, such persons cannot be sincere. For myself, however, I draw a very different conclusion. Their conduct is perfectly in harmony with that of the theoretic friends of cold water, plain dress, and abstemiousness in general. They are compelled to admit the truth; but it is so much against their habits, as in the case of Gassendi, besides being still more strongly ...
— Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men, and by Experience in All Ages • William Andrus Alcott
... was at variance with that of the Founder of our faith. His method was rigid self-assertion, and the power of the strong. The affront he conceived to have been laid upon him and upon the country he represented could only be wiped out by martial law. Theoretic babbling about equality had no place in his ethics of the universe. He proceeded to raid and burn both private dwellings, palaces, and magazines; and the Government House, which was reputed to be the finest building in the world, was operated upon for a month, until it was reduced to ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... the tie between father and daughter grew very strong and tender indeed. Ellinor, it is true, divided her affection between her baby sister and her papa; but he, caring little for babies, had only a theoretic regard for his younger child, while the elder absorbed all his love. Every day that he dined at home Ellinor was placed opposite to him while he ate his late dinner; she sat where her mother had done during the meal, although ...
— A Dark Night's Work • Elizabeth Gaskell
... really separated the different sciences and erected them into distinct systems, each resting upon its own proper principles. He distributed philosophy into three branches:—(i.) Theoretic; (ii.) Efficient; (iii.) Practical. The Theoretic he divided into—1. Physics; 2. Mathematics; 3. Theology, or the Prime Philosophy—the science known in modern times as Metaphysics. The Efficient embraces what we now term the arts,—1. Logic; ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... the cosmos facilitate this fluency, produce the sentiment of rationality. Conceived in such modes, being vouches for itself and needs no further philosophic formulation. But this fluency may be obtained in various ways; and first I will take up the theoretic way. ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... wife! She had rather slave as a nursery-governess all her life! And how could she write fiction with such a one for mentor and company? He would expect her to be methodic, to see that eggs were fresh, and beds well aired. So, by thinking, she reasoned herself into such a theoretic reprobation of this attempt upon her, that his offer became a heinous crime. If she answered him shortly, brusquely, nay rudely, it would be but what he deserved for making her ridiculous to herself ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... mind, however, educated upon the theories yet prevailing in the so-called religious world, must here recognize a departure from the presentation to which they have been accustomed: to make the psalm speak according to prevalent theoretic modes, the verse would have to be changed thus:—'To thee, O Lord, belongeth justice, for thou renderest to every man ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald
... moderation and constitutional caution, let me recall a few actual sentences from the speech on "Conciliation with America," published three years before Rousseau's death. The grounds of Burke's imagination were not theoretic. He says nothing about abstract man born free; but, as though quietly addressing the House of ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... things of the flesh.—The woman had been inconceivably foolish, from every point of view. If she had known, good heavens, if she had only known! But he inclined now to the more merciful view that, veritably, she didn't know; that her practical, even her theoretic, knowledge was insufficient for her to have had any clear design. It was just a blind push of starved animal instinct. Of course she must go. Her remaining in the house was in every way unpermissible; still he need not, perhaps, have ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... Sayres to give freedom to seventy men and women, fellow-beings and fellow-Christians. Had Tripoli, instead of Washington, been the scene of this undertaking, the unhappy leaders in it would have been as secure of the theoretic as they now are of the practical part of martyrdom. I question whether the Dey of Tripoli is blessed with a District Attorney so benighted as ours at the seat of government. Very fitly is he named Key, who would allow himself ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... clear-sightedly to act, is to render heroism impossible. Into it there enters an element of insanity. The sacrificer must feel that he cares nothing for what is rational, but only for what is holy, for his duty. The rational and the holy,—in the mind of him who has not been disturbed by theoretic controversy these two stand in harsh antithesis, and the antithesis has been approved by important ethical writers of our time. The rational man is, of course, needed in the humdrum work of life. His assertive and sagacious spirit clears ...
— The Nature of Goodness • George Herbert Palmer |
