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Contemplate   Listen
verb
Contemplate  v. t.  (past & past part. contemplated; pres. part. contemplating)  
1.
To look at on all sides or in all its bearings; to view or consider with continued attention; to regard with deliberate care; to meditate on; to study. "To love, at least contemplate and admire, What I see excellent. " "We thus dilate Our spirits to the size of that they contemplate."
2.
To consider or have in view, as contingent or probable; to look forward to; to purpose; to intend. "There remain some particulars to complete the information contemplated by those resolutions." "If a treaty contains any stipulations which contemplate a state of future war."
Synonyms: To view; behold; study; ponder; muse; meditate on; reflect on; consider; intend; design; plan; propose; purpose. See Meditate.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Contemplate" Quotes from Famous Books



... happiness. All the features of the picture are in unison with this expression, except in the tender anxiety of the Virgin's eye; and all is at rest in the surrounding objects, save where her hand gently removes the veil to contemplate the unrivalled ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison

... kindness to her, her brother-in-law and his wife ought not to be burdened with her support for longer than was necessary. As to turning governess, or companion, or lady-help, there was an incongruity in the idea that made it too ludicrous to contemplate even for an instant. There is no other way that a handsome and penniless woman can deliver her friends of the burden of ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron

... scores of other authoritative testimonies which might have been cited to the direct contrary of our traveller's tale under this head, we can plainly perceive that Mr. Froude's love is not only blind, but adder-deaf as well. We shall now contemplate him under circumstances where his feelings are quite other than ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas

... to contemplate the works of these great men without arriving at the conclusion, that it is in the varied and discursive education of the Continent, that a foundation has been laid for the extraordinary eminence which its travellers have attained. It is the vast number of subjects with which ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various

... Philip. There would be no longer any special necessity for this after the treaty that had been made. But, notwithstanding this agreement, it is not to be supposed that the new marriage would be a very agreeable subject for Philip to contemplate, or that it would be otherwise than very awkward for him to be present on the occasion of the celebration of it; so Richard decided that, on all accounts, it was best to postpone the ceremony until ...
— Richard I - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... wrote better music than he had yet given to the world. The libretto is a miserable perversion of Shakespeare, and for that reason the opera has never succeeded in England, but in countries which can calmly contemplate a ballet of witches, or listen unmoved to Lady Macbeth trolling a drinking-song, it has had its day of success. 'Macbeth' is interesting to students of Verdi's development as the first work in which ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild

... restoration of appearances. It seemed necessary that Shoesmith's marriage should not seem to be hurried, still more necessary that I should not vanish inexplicably. I had to be visible with Margaret in London just as much as possible; we went to restaurants, we visited the theatre; we could even contemplate the possibility of my presence at the wedding. For that, however, we had schemed a weekend visit to Wales, and a fictitious sprained ankle at the last moment ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells

... the people of the United States. Secretary Seward, in forwarding a copy of the resolution to Mr. Dayton, our minister to France, had, however, instructed him to inform the French government that "the President does not at present contemplate any departure from the policy which this government has hitherto pursued in regard to the war which exists between France ...
— Maximilian in Mexico - A Woman's Reminiscences of the French Intervention 1862-1867 • Sara Yorke Stevenson

... its mate, with as much grass as it could hold in its bill, passed close by me, and flew into the bush, where I perceived them, both together, busily employed in building their nest, and singing as their work went on. I entirely forgot my hunting, to contemplate the objects that were before me. I saw the birds in the air and the fishes in the water working diligently and cheerfully, and all this without hands. I thought it was strange and I became lost in wonder. I looked at myself, and saw two long arms, provided with hands and ...
— Anecdotes for Boys • Harvey Newcomb

... projections of the bodies taken from two points so near each other that, by viewing the two diagrams simultaneously, one with each eye, we identify the corresponding points intuitively. The method in which we simultaneously contemplate two figures, and recognize a correspondence between certain points in the one figure and certain points in the other, is one of the most powerful and fertile methods hitherto known in science. Thus in pure geometry the theories of similar, reciprocal and inverse figures ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 3 - "Destructors" to "Diameter" • Various

... government. From official documents we learn that a fraction over three-fourths of the revenue collected for the support of government has uniformly been raised from the North. Pause now while you can, gentlemen, and contemplate carefully and candidly these important items. Leaving out of view, for the present, the countless millions of dollars you must expend in a war with the North; with tens of thousands of your sons and brothers slain in battle, and offered up as sacrifices upon the ...
— Narrative of the Life of J.D. Green, a Runaway Slave, from Kentucky • Jacob D. Green

... way-worn pilgrim, when the tempest whistles through his locks, and night is gathering round, beholds his faithful dog, the companion and solace of his journeying, stretched lifeless at his feet, so did the generous-hearted hero of the Manhattoes contemplate the untimely end of Antony Van Corlear. He had been the faithful attendant of his footsteps; he had charmed him in many a weary hour by his honest gayety and the martial melody of his trumpet, and had followed him with unflinching loyalty and affection through many a scene of direful peril ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving

... them there for nearly an hour, in which space of time she probably reflected they could build up as rosy a future as was good for them to contemplate. Then she returned to the drawing-room, followed by a ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman

... flippant remarks on your taste for the romantic and extraordinary in fictitious narrative. How little I expected to have had such events to record in the course of a few days! And to witness scenes of terror, or to contemplate them in description, is as different, my dearest Matilda, as to bend over the brink of a precipice holding by the frail tenure of a half-rooted shrub, or to admire the same precipice as represented in the landscape of Salvator. But I ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... return to the particular human being whose fate, as a type, we may be said to be tracing, and of whose dense body and etheric double we have already disposed. Let us contemplate him in the state of very brief duration that follows the shaking off of these two casings. Says H.P. Blavatsky, after quoting from Plutarch a description ...
— Death—and After? • Annie Besant

... ought to cultivate a taste for the beautiful. We are necessarily compelled to contemplate much moral impurity and degradation. We are so often doomed to disappointment. We are apt to become either callous or melancholy, or, if preserved from these, the constant strain on the sensibilities is likely to injure ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie

... regulating trade,—perhaps the treaty-making power clashed with that,—and concluded by observing that the House was the grand inquest of the nation, and that it had the right to call for papers on which to ground an impeachment. At present he did not contemplate an exercise of that right. Mr. Madison said it was now to be decided whether the general power of making treaties supersedes the powers of the House of Representatives, particularly specified in the Constitution, so as to give to the executive all deliberative ...
— Albert Gallatin - American Statesmen Series, Vol. XIII • John Austin Stevens

... for law and order taken by these great dailies and the courageous action taken by the best citizens of New Orleans, who rallied to the support of the civic authorities, that prevented a massacre of colored people awful to contemplate. ...
— Mob Rule in New Orleans • Ida B. Wells-Barnett

... getting rid of a difficulty, would have involved an act of direct and uncompromising dishonesty to which Prosper, though of sufficiently elastic conscience within the limit of professional gains, could not contemplate. The Chateau de Senanges was indeed his own lawful property; his without prejudice to the former owners, dispossessed by no act of his. But the ci-devant Marquis—confiding in him to an extent which was quite astonishing, except on the pis-aller theory, ...
— A Stable for Nightmares - or Weird Tales • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... now raising Lincoln to the highest place which his ambition could contemplate. His own action in the months that followed his defeat by Douglas cannot have contributed much to his surprising elevation, yet it illustrates well his strength and his weakness, his real fitness, now and then startlingly revealed, for the highest ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood

... she could not sometimes be foresighted as to agreeable future events, since for his part he was quite willing to wait for disagreeable ones until they happened. Not that he quailed personally from the prospect of martyrdom; this he could contemplate with complacency and even enthusiasm, but, zealot though he was, he did shrink from the thought that his beautiful and delicate wife might be called upon to share the glory of that crown. Indeed, as his own purpose was unalterable, ...
— The Ghost Kings • H. Rider Haggard

... what he was that is precious to us. Bonum virum facile crederes, magnum libenter. If John Winthrop be the highest type of the men who shaped New England, we can find no better one of those whom New England has shaped than Josiah Quincy. It is a figure that we can contemplate with more than satisfaction,—a figure of admirable example in a democracy as that of a model citizen. His courage and high-mindedness were personal to him; let us believe that his integrity, his industry, his love of letters, his devotion to duty, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various

... precisely the meaning of the passage. Somebody else—somebody aside from herself, Staff and Alison Landis—knew the secret of the bandbox and the smuggled necklace, and with astonishing intuition had planned this trap to gain possession of it. She was amazed to contemplate the penetrating powers of inference and deduction, the cunning and resource which had not only in so short a time fathomed the mystery of the vanished necklace, but had discovered the exchange of bandboxes, had traced ...
— The Bandbox • Louis Joseph Vance

... help himself. A wave of ungovernable fury surged up to the very tent-poles of Elijah's lodge and demanded vengeance. Elijah trembled and hesitated. In the thraldom of his selfish passion for Mrs. Dall he dared not contemplate a collision with her countrymen. He would have again sought refuge in his passive, non-committal attitude, but he knew the impersonal character of Indian retribution and compensation—a sacrifice of equal value, without reference to the culpability of the victim—and he ...
— A Drift from Redwood Camp • Bret Harte

... a means, not an end. We must not love art for its own sake, that would be idolatry. Art gives wings for ascent to God. One need not pause to contemplate his wings. ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various

... heard—then there is no need to indulge in speculations, always dangerous, upon a possible remedy which may never be necessary, and which, while the inhabitants of England and Ireland are still fellow-citizens of one State, it is painful even to contemplate. On the whole, then, it appears that whatever changes or calamities the future may have in store, the maintenance of the Union is at this day the one sound policy for England to pursue. It is sound because it is expedient; it is ...
— England's Case Against Home Rule • Albert Venn Dicey

... operation than we are apt to think. The evildoer, unfortunately for our sense of righteousness in prosecuting him, is not always one who has unmixed evil instincts, and nearly every contingency of human conduct becomes, as we contemplate it, many-sided enough to be very confusing. And it was beginning to dawn upon Rendel that, although it may fulfil the ends of abstract justice that the guilty should be exposed and the innocent acquitted, such an act takes an ugly aspect when the eager pursuer is himself the innocent ...
— The Arbiter - A Novel • Lady F. E. E. Bell

... been over to England to make purchases. Arriving here, I found the bill just out. I read it, and at once cancelled half my orders. We are reducing stock. What Home Rule would do for us I cannot contemplate. The mere threat amounts to partial paralysis. What the Cork people want with Home Rule is beyond me. They have everything in their own hands. The city elections of all kinds are governed by the rural voters of five miles round. ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)

... The study of the means and methods of religious education, especially of children, in the home and family, is one of the most evident and important religious duties resting on parents and all who contemplate marriage and family life. ...
— Religious Education in the Family • Henry F. Cope

... anxiety with which he viewed the person behind, gaining upon him at the imminent hazard of tripping him up; to see him gradually expend the painful force he had put on at first, and turn slowly round on the slide, with his face towards the point from which he had started; to contemplate the playful smile which mantled on his face when he had accomplished the distance, and the eagerness with which he turned round when he had done so, and ran after his predecessor: his black gaiters tripping pleasantly through the snow, and his eyes beaming cheerfulness and gladness through ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education

... worthy lasting remembrance. "We esteem ourselves," observed the writer, "a BEACON, placed by divine graciousness on the awfully perilous coast of human frailty." "We view ourselves as a SENTINEL, bound by allegiance to our country, our sovereign, and our God. We contemplate ourselves as the WINNOWERS for the public." He then proceeds—"We desire to encourage the cloudless flames of rectified communion," rejecting "each effusion, however splendid, of degenerate curiosity and perverted genius—of misanthrophic ascerbity and calumnious retrospection." Such were the ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West

... and the night to spend in ignorant sleep. Even if there were a cosmic drama—which there is not—man is too trivial to play in it a leading role. The free man knows all this; but his heart is tempered and strong. He can contemplate his place in the universe without bitterness and without fear. For the free man's love, as his worship, flows from his ...
— The Philosophy of Spinoza • Baruch de Spinoza

... sternly, "it was very wrong of you not to tell me. I am responsible for Carita. If anything should happen to her here—" she paused; the thought was too dreadful to contemplate. ...
— Blue Bonnet in Boston - or, Boarding-School Days at Miss North's • Caroline E. Jacobs

... of the canoes and of the ark, no other vessel was to be found on the lake. Nevertheless, Deerslayer well knew that a raft was soon made, and, as dead trees were to be found in abundance near the water, did the savages seriously contemplate the risks of an assault, it would not be a very difficult matter to find the necessary means. The celebrated American axe, a tool that is quite unrivalled in its way, was then not very extensively known, and the savages were ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper

... instances of that power our age is not barren. And in despite of the foes without and within that have wrought her woe—of the Pharisaism that is a mask for fraud, of the mammon-worship cloaked as respectability, of scepticism lightly mocking, of the bolder enmity of the blasphemer—we cannot contemplate the story of Christianity throughout our epoch, even in these islands and this empire, without seeing that the advance of the Faith is real and constant, the advance of the rising tide, and that her seeming defeats are but the deceptive reflux of ...
— Great Britain and Her Queen • Anne E. Keeling

... and one high office-chair. No other seat was in the room, nor was there any lateral window, the room being lighted from the top, so that Justice could be in no way interested with the country outside—she could only contemplate her native heaven through the sky-light. Behind the desk were placed a rude shelf, where some "modern instances," and old ones too, were lying-covered with dust—and a gun-rack, where some carbines with fixed bayonets were paraded ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover

... mysterious juice which enabled him to behold at one glance all the hidden riches of the universe. Surely it is no exaggeration to say that no external advantage is to be compared with that purification of the intellectual eye which gives us to contemplate the infinite wealth of the mental world; all the hoarded treasures of the primeval dynasties, and all the shapeless ore of its yet unexplored mines. This is the gift of Athens to man. Her freedom and her power have been annihilated for more ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson

... upon by the eyes of the great poet, Richard Alardyce, and suffered a little shock which would have led him, had he been wearing a hat, to remove it. The eyes looked at him out of the mellow pinks and yellows of the paint with divine friendliness, which embraced him, and passed on to contemplate the entire world. The paint had so faded that very little but the beautiful large eyes were left, dark in the ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf

... to go out to rodeo work; indeed, he was anxious to go. But, not being a morbid young man, he did not contemplate carrying a broken heart with him. Teresita was sweet and winsome and maddeningly alluring; he knew it, he felt it still. Indeed, he was made to realize it every time the whim seized her to punish Jack by smiling upon Dade. ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower

... physiognomy in some manner, aliquo modo imaginibus is Pliny's expression, showed that even their persons should not entirely be annihilated; they indeed, adds Pliny, form a spectacle which the gods themselves might contemplate; for if the gods sent those heroes to the earth, it is Varro who secured their immortality, and has so multiplied and distributed them in all places, that we may carry them about us, place them wherever we choose, and fix our eyes on them with perpetual admiration. A spectacle ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... in the same flat notes he had used a moment before, and without changing his position; but the two words gave Laurie a shock. He did not believe that either Rodney or Epstein would contemplate a dissolution of their existing partnership; but an hour ago he would not have believed that Rodney Bangs could say to him the things ...
— The Girl in the Mirror • Elizabeth Garver Jordan

... vertebrae and distortion of the ribs, the vital organs are encroached upon, causing serious functional derangement of the heart, lungs, liver, and stomach, producing, as its inevitable consequence a list of maladies fearful to contemplate. ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce

... far from expecting to be attacked by the armies of Piedmont. The most he could contemplate was an attack by the Garibaldians, and the probability of some partial insurrections in the interior. He distributed his troops accordingly in the towns and along the Neapolitan frontier. The insolent message of General Fanti contributed to confirm him in this ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell

... and more near, they again gathered around the pits, and saw that food was waiting for them at the bottom of both. They could contemplate their victims unharmed, and this made them courageous enough to think of an attack. The human voice and the gaze of human eyes had lost their power, and the pack of wild hounds, counting several score, began to think of taking some steps ...
— The Giraffe Hunters • Mayne Reid

... the waves, Shuffles was appalled at his own act; for even he had not sunk so low as to contemplate murder. The deed was not premeditated. It was done on the spur of angry excitement, which dethroned his reason. The chief conspirator had so often and so lightly used the language of the League, about "falling overboard accidentally," that he had become familiar with the idea; and, perhaps, ...
— Outward Bound - Or, Young America Afloat • Oliver Optic

... endeavour be redoubled, so to possess his pupil's mind with the worth and dignity of the undertaking, that there should be no opening for the entrance of any inferior consideration!—"Weigh well (he would say) the value of the object for which you are about to contend, and contemplate and study its various excellences, till your whole soul be on fire for its acquisition. Consider too, that, if you fail, misery and infamy are united in the alternative which awaits you. Let not the mistaken notion of its being ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce

... Could anyone contemplate the history of mankind as a a whole, of which the histories of individual nations are but the parts, the successive steps in the evolution of humanity would of course afford him a similar objective rule for all these points ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher

... theater of war, and serve even as strategic reserves; their positions will depend not only on their magnitude, but also on the nature of the frontiers and the distance from the base to the front of operations. Whenever an army takes the offensive, it should always contemplate the possibility of being compelled to act on the defensive, and by the posting of a reserve between the base and front of operations the advantage of an active reserve on the field of battle is gained: it can fly to the support of menaced points without weakening ...
— The Art of War • Baron Henri de Jomini

... patiently waiting the completion of their future spiritual forces. It is quite evident that we are not meant to attain our full mental stature on the earth-plane, or what would be left to achieve in the countless ages of immortality? Man believes in immortality and yet seems to contemplate it as a state of stagnation and quiescence. Why he believes in it he cannot fully explain. It is, as you said before, a consciousness given to the races of humanity, but no more capable of commonplace analysis than time, or ...
— The Mystery of a Turkish Bath • E.M. Gollan (AKA Rita)

... cigar thoughtfully for a while, then: "I don't believe they contemplate a big deal. They're not that sort. Henry Nelson is selfish and suspicious, and I'm told that Bell wouldn't trust anybody. I'm informed also that every dollar they have made has gone back into new leases and wells and that they intend to hold everything for themselves. ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach

... change whatever in the inflexible purpose, which it was quite terrific even to me to contemplate, and from the power of which I had always felt convinced it was impossible for this wretch to escape, ...
— Hunted Down • Charles Dickens

... ground for a few moments. Roldan, whose eyes were very keen, and, during these days, preternaturally sharpened, noted that several of the Indians were whispering under cover of the loud mutterings about them. The face of the Californian Indian is not pleasant to contemplate at any time: it is either stupid or sinister. Roldan fancied he detected something particularly evil in the glance of the whispering savages, and resolved to warn ...
— The Valiant Runaways • Gertrude Atherton

... Martel's wife. Her face was very comely. She was the Island beauty when Martel married her, and much sought after, which made her present state the more bitter to contemplate. Her face was whiter even than of late, at the moment, by reason of the dark circles of suffering round her eyes and the white cloth bound round her head. She sat up and looked at her father, with the patient ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham

... quaint, sensitive person. And he could not help being attracted by Mr. Jackson, whose welcome contrasted pleasantly with the official breeziness of his other colleagues. He wondered, too, whether it is so very reactionary to contemplate the antique. ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster

... native of Poland, was next introduced; she said: Louis Kossuth told us it is not well to look back for regret, but only for instruction. I therefore intend slightly to cast my mind's eye back for the purpose of enabling us, as far as possible, to contemplate the present and foresee the future. It is unnecessary to point out the cause of this war. It is written on every object we behold. It is but too well understood that the primary cause is Slavery; and it is well to keep that in mind, for the purpose of gaining ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... remembered perfectly how Scawthorne pointed out of the cab at the old man Snowdon, and said that he was very rich. A miser, or what? More she had never tried to discover. Now Sidney himself had hinted at something in Jane's circumstances which, he professed, put it out of the question that he could contemplate marrying her. Had he told her the truth? Could she in fact consider him free? Might there not be some reason for his wishing ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing

... cool and comforting hand that sought to lead him into gardens of stillness and passive being, where he could no more hear the clangour and vexing noises of a world that angered and agonised, there had also been the lure of another passion of the heart, which was too perilously dear to contemplate. Eyes that were beautiful, and their beauty was not for him; a spirit that was bright and glowing, but the brightness and the glow might not renew his days. It was hard to fight alone. Alone he was, for only to one may ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... his liking than the morose and savage Walter Butler, whom he somewhat feared. Wyatt was perhaps the least troubled of all those present. Caring for himself only, the burning of Oghwaga caused him no grief. He suffered neither from the misfortune of friend nor foe. He was able to contemplate the glowing tower of light with curiosity only. Braxton Wyatt knew that the Iroquois and their allies would attempt revenge for the burning of Oghwaga, and he saw profit for himself in such adventures. ...
— The Scouts of the Valley • Joseph A. Altsheler

... were preparing their guns, the squirrel had made a second rush to the top of this limb; where it sat itself down in a fork, and appeared to contemplate the setting sun. No better mark could have been desired for a shot, provided they could get near enough; and that they were likely to do, for the little animal did not appear to regard the presence either of them or their horses—thus showing that it had never been hunted. With ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid

... the articles of union, it was agreed that Freemasonry should consist of the three symbolic degrees, "including the Holy Royal Arch." The present study does not contemplate a detailed study of Capitular Masonry, which has its own history and historians (Origin of the English Rite, Hughan), except to say that it seems to have begun about 1738-40, the concensus of opinion differing as to whether it began in England or on the ...
— The Builders - A Story and Study of Masonry • Joseph Fort Newton

... open and gleaming with Satanic fury. His transition from life to death had been immediate, with the result that there was indelibly stamped on his face all the furious rage and lust of battle. He was an ill-looking fellow, and all in all was not an agreeable object to contemplate. The other was a far different case. He was lying on a sloping ridge, where the Confederates had charged a battery, and had suffered fearfully. He was a mere boy, not over eighteen, with regular features, light ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell

... condescended to call himself the stranger's friend. At this moment, painful as my reflections were, the extraordinary beauty of a small Moss irresistibly caught my eye; and though the whole plant was not larger than the top of one of my fingers, I could not contemplate the delicate conformation of its roots, leaves, and fruit, without admiration. Can that Being (thought I) who planted, watered, and brought to perfection, in this obscure part of the world, a thing which appears ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson

... was going on within me, I never could bear that the child should see me looking at him, and yet I was under a fascination which made it a kind of business with me to contemplate his slight and fragile figure and think how easily it might be done. Sometimes I would steal up-stairs and watch him as he slept; but usually I hovered in the garden near the window of the room in which he learnt his little tasks; and there, ...
— Master Humphrey's Clock • Charles Dickens

... level with the sea. In the light air the sluggish ship moved ever so slowly, with canvas spread on the fore and mizzen masts. Spirits revived and life tasted passing sweet. To drift in the open sea upon wave-washed rafts was an expedient which all mariners shuddered to contemplate. It was with feelings far different that they now assembled spars and planks and lashed and spiked them together on the chance of needing rafts to ferry them ashore ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine

... riches to enter into the Kingdom of God"—strive, by the amassing of wealth, effectually, as far as in us lies, to stop our own heavenward course, as well as that of those dear little ones, whom our heavenly Father may have committed to our peculiar and tender care? We may, without anxiety, contemplate the circumstance (I shall not say the misfortunes of dying and leaving our families to struggle with many seeming difficulties in this world) should obedience to the Divine Commands bring us and them into such a situation; because our faith could lay hold, for support and consolation, on the ...
— Christian Devotedness • Anthony Norris Groves

... writer of the last generation.' To add even one word toward a solution of the knotty point here indicated transcends, I confess, my utmost competence. It is painful to picture to one's self the agonizing emotions with which certain philologists would contemplate an authentic effigy of the Attila of speech who, by his is being built or is being done, first offered violence to the whole circle of the proprieties. So far as I have observed, the first grammar that exhibits ...
— The Verbalist • Thomas Embly Osmun, (AKA Alfred Ayres)

... ordeal. And I have decided that we shall not be in danger, for this reason. We shall be armed as none of the dead were. Our precautions will preclude any possibility of foul play from a material assault. And, needless to say, we contemplate no other. We are free agents, and I should not quarrel with any among us who shirked; but duty is duty, and we have all faced dangers as great as this—probably far greater. What you say is most interesting, doctor, ...
— The Grey Room • Eden Phillpotts

... despondent and hopeless, and wretched actin', why, this belief made 'em jest blossom right out into a state of hopefulness, and calmness, and joy—refreshin' indeed to contemplate. ...
— Samantha Among the Brethren, Complete • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)

... abdication is the greatest obstacle of all, it is a profound upheaval of the whole constitutional system; and its acceptance will involve a far, far greater expenditure of time than we are able to contemplate or to provide for. I am bound, therefore, to appeal from the letter of your Majesty's promise (which no doubt you have observed) to the spirit in which as I conceive it ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman

... by the horror of the thing, she had flung violently away from Garth, feeling herself soiled and dishonoured by the mere fact of her love for him, too revolted to contemplate anything other than the severance of the tie between ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler

... though he was, the boy could not contemplate his probable fate without misgiving. Nothing was visible in all the white illimitable plain save a hummock here and there, with a distant berg on the horizon. He could not expect the level character of the ice to extend far. ...
— The Giant of the North - Pokings Round the Pole • R.M. Ballantyne

... Pleasure includes two things; rest in the good, and perception of this rest. As to the former therefore, since it is more perfect to contemplate the known truth, than to seek for the unknown, the contemplation of what we know, is in itself more pleasing than the research of what we do not know. Nevertheless, as to the second, it happens that research is sometimes more pleasing accidentally, in so far as it proceeds from a greater desire: ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas

... discordant to one who would fain have sheltered herself from all but peaceful and religious ideas. "She had" (says her sister of that gentle "little one"), "in the course of her life, been called on to contemplate near at hand, and for a long time, the terrible effects of talents misused and faculties abused; hers was naturally a sensitive, reserved, and dejected nature; what she saw sunk very deeply into her mind; it did her harm. She brooded over it till she believed it to be a duty to reproduce every ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... dear, is perhaps a little too much the reverse where a young couple is concerned. I have told you before, and I repeat it now emphatically, that neither Cicely nor Malcolm is in a position to contemplate ...
— Simon • J. Storer Clouston

... in that class, however, but in most others of society, there are multitudes who can boast of very different sentiments—men of real worth and discernment, who do not disdain to contemplate the exertions of a powerful mind in its aspirations to dignity, nor turn with contempt from the man whom nature has enriched, though it should have been his lot to come into the world under the depression of a needy or obscure parentage.—Persons of liberal hearts, and luminous ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol. I. No. 3. March 1810 • Various

... to organize the various states of the peninsula into a confederacy under the nominal leadership of the Pope, but under the real supremacy of the sovereign of Piedmont. Ultimately the plan was so modified as to contemplate nothing short of a unification of the entire country under the control of a centralized, ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg

... alighted out of the coach, and led her into the hall, among all the company. There was immediately a profound silence, they left off dancing, and the violins ceased to play, so attentive was every one to contemplate the singular beauty of this unknown new comer. Nothing was then heard but a ...
— The Fairy Tales of Charles Perrault • Charles Perrault

... contemplate, collectively, to have a just estimation of objects. One moment's being uneasy or not, seems of no consequence; yet this may be thought of the next, and the next, and so on, till there is a large portion of misery. In the same way one must think ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill

... He had not also created images and likenesses of Himself to whom He could communicate His divine? What would He exist for, otherwise, except to make this and not that or bring something into existence but not something else, and this merely to be able to contemplate from afar only incidents and constant changes as on a stage? What would there be divine in these unless they were for the purpose of serving subjects who would receive the divine more intimately and see and sense it? The divine is of an inexhaustible glory and would not keep ...
— Angelic Wisdom about Divine Providence • Emanuel Swedenborg

... played at it—before," he answered. "I did—at one time—contemplate the possibility of playing at it. But that was long ago—as long ago as last night. I am glad to the core of my soul that I decided against it before I met you, dear Eve. I have the letter of decision in my coat pocket this moment. I mean to ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1905 to 1906 • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... what point of view can the omnipresent Lord be said to occupy a limited space and to be minute?—He may, we reply, be spoken of thus, 'because he is to be contemplated thus.' The passage under discussion teaches us to contemplate the Lord as abiding within the lotus of the heart, characterised by minuteness and similar qualities—which apprehension of the Lord is rendered possible through a modification of the mind—just as Hari is contemplated ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Sankaracarya - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 1 • George Thibaut

... free to do so; perhaps that is the most he asks. For he is but reaching out through and beyond mankind, trying to see what he can of the infinite and its immensities—throwing back to us whatever he can—but ever conscious that he but occasionally catches a glimpse; conscious that if he would contemplate the greater, he must wrestle with the lesser, even though it dims an outline; that he must struggle if he would hurl back anything—even a broken fragment for men to examine and perchance in it find a germ of some part of truth; conscious ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives

... horrible object to contemplate at that moment, and it was but little wonder that Clif turned sick and faint as ...
— A Prisoner of Morro - In the Hands of the Enemy • Upton Sinclair

... of days skirmishing at Banklands, and fared well, but as there was no hotel in the suburb Nicholas did not contemplate making a lengthy stay. Something he saw on the second afternoon induced him to change his mind, and threw him into a state of profound reflection lasting for nearly an hour; then he sauntered over to the man working on the ...
— The Missing Link • Edward Dyson

... for a people which possessed the power, perhaps to a greater degree than any other, to reflect and contemplate its own highest qualities in the mirror of the drama. But this power was destined to be marred for centuries by hostile forces, for whose predominance the Italians were only in part responsible. The universal talent for dramatic representation could not indeed be ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt

... by the newel-post to direct Madame to Lydia's room and to offer up a devout thanksgiving to the kindly Providence that constantly smoothed the path before her. "Oh, Madame, just think if it had been a season when hips were in style!" As she continued her progress to what she was beginning to contemplate calling her drawing-room, she glowed with a sense of well-being which buoyed her up like wings. In common with many other estimable people, she could not but value more highly what she had had to struggle to retain, and the exciting vicissitudes ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield

... be accomplished in a casino when one has empty pockets? Before crossing the Splugen he had written to a petty Jew banker of his acquaintance for money. He counted but little on the compliance of this Hebrew, and this was why he paused five minutes to contemplate the Plessur, after which he retraced his steps. Twenty minutes later he was crossing a public square, ornamented with a pretty Gothic fountain, and seeing before him a cathedral, he hastened to ...
— Samuel Brohl & Company • Victor Cherbuliez

... we are also introduced to the incurable egotist, who could only find time to visit his old mother once every ten years, whilst, as boon companion of a petty German Prince, he always found time for his pleasures. We are not only admitted to contemplate the pomp and majesty of his world-wide fame, we are also admitted to the sordid circumstances of Goethe's "home." And our awe and reverence are turned into pity. We pity the miserable husband of a drunken and ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea

... encounter upon the public street a rude license of glance, from men of all ages and conditions, which falls little short of outrage. They stare at her as she approaches; and I have seen them turn and contemplate ladies as they passed them, keeping a few paces in advance, with a leisurely sidelong gait. Something of this insolence might be forgiven to thoughtless, hot-blooded youth; but the gross and knowing leer that the elders ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells

... Between such old friends." However, she waved away the hand-bag, he calmed down, and their voices sank again. Presently I saw him raise her hand to his lips, while with her back to the room she continued to contemplate out of the window the bare and untidy garden. At last he went out of the room, throwing to the table an airy "Bonjour, bonjour," which was not acknowledged by any ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad

... as to original promoters, the chance of even any return was as one against ten of a total loss, fifty per cent. of annual profit would not be more than a "fair return"! The original Massachusetts railway legislation seems to contemplate that ten per cent. should be the normal return on railway stock, for it provides that at any time the commonwealth may purchase any or all its railroads upon the payment of the cost, plus ten per cent. ...
— Popular Law-making • Frederic Jesup Stimson

... Enthusiast! you contemplate the ocean in a calm, nor dream how frightfully a tempest ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter

... asked us to come forward with our proposal. We insisted on war. No other answer could I get (from Berlin) than that it was a colossal condescension on the part of Austria not to contemplate any acquisition of territory. Sir Edward justly pointed out that one could reduce a country to vassalage without acquiring territory; that Russia would see this, and regard it as a humiliation not to be put up with. The impression grew stronger and stronger that ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish

... Father, and was manifested unto us" (1 John i:1-2). Wonderful are the blessed words which came from His lips, wonderful is His moral glory, His untiring service, His love, His patience and everything which the Holy Spirit has been pleased to tell us of His earthly life. The more our hearts contemplate Him the more wonderful He appears. But still greater and more wonderful is it that He went to the cross to give His life as a ransom for many, that the Just One should die for the unjust, that He who knew no sin was made sin ...
— The Lord of Glory - Meditations on the person, the work and glory of our Lord Jesus Christ • Arno Gaebelein

... revolution which much of his policy underwent in order to effect this object bears too close a resemblance to the sudden and inexplicable changes of front habitual to placemen of the Tadpole stamp to be altogether pleasant to contemplate in a politician of pure aims and lofty ambition. Humiliating is not too strong a term to apply to a letter in which he expresses his desire to "efface the past by every action of his life," in order that he may ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various

... a sinful world, is an astounding fact indeed, a sublime moral miracle in history. But this freedom from the common sin and guilt of the race is, after all, only the negative side of his character, which rises in magnitude as we contemplate the positive side, namely, absolute moral and religious perfection. It is universally admitted, even by deists and rationalists, that Christ taught the purest and sublimest system of ethics, which throws all the moral precepts and maxims of the wisest men of antiquity far into the shade. The ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... constantly compelled to control and subdue the kindest and warmest impulses of your generous nature. The moral benefits of this peculiar species of trial belong to another part of my subject: the present object is to find out the most favourable point of view in which to contemplate the unpleasantness of your lot, merely with relation to your temporal happiness. Look, then, around you; and, even in your own limited sphere of observation, it cannot but strike you, that those who derive most enjoyment from objects of taste, from books, ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady

... mind the conception, however faint, of an ideal holiness? But where? oh, where? Not in the world around strewn with unholiness. Not in myself, unholy too, without and within. Is there a Holy One, whom I may contemplate with utter delight? and if so, where is He? Oh, that I might behold, if but for a moment, His perfect beauty, even though, as in the fable of Semele of old, 'the lightning of His glance ...
— Daily Thoughts - selected from the writings of Charles Kingsley by his wife • Charles Kingsley

... he really loved. Most fathers would have stormed at the boy when pleading failed, would have given commands with harshness, would have menaced the recalcitrant with disinheritance. Edward Gilder did none of these things, though his heart was sorely wounded. He loved his son too much to contemplate making more evil for the lad by any estrangement between them. Yet he felt that the matter could not safely be left in the hands of Dick himself. He realized that his son loved the woman—nor could he wonder much at that. His keen eyes had perceived Mary ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana

... Gyges, a little surprised at this brusque question, 'in a cedar box overlaid with plates of brass, and I would bury it under a detached rock in some desert place; and from time to time, when I should feel assured that none could see me, I would go thither to contemplate my precious jewel and admire the colours of the sky ...
— King Candaules • Theophile Gautier

... absorbed in serious thoughts about eternal things, inquiring the way to heaven, and seeming intent on the attainment of that high and glorious condition, presents a spectacle as solemn as it is interesting to contemplate. Such, doubtless, has been the condition of many communities in the early and later history of American revivals; and it is no less true that the fruits have been the turning of many ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)

... the Raja, "does not the soul or conscious life enter the body through the sagittal suture and lodge in the brain, thence to contemplate, through the same ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton

... and said: "A woman or a friar can't insult one. I contemplate living in peace for the time that I shall remain in this country and I don't want any more quarrels with men who wear skirts. Besides, I've learned that the Provincial has scoffed at my orders. I asked for the removal of this friar as a punishment and they transferred him ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal

... universe of ours—space and all it contains—is a thing of five dimensions, a continuum we have never begun to contemplate in its true complexity and immensity. There are three of its dimensions with which we are familiar. Our normal senses perceive and understand them—length, breadth and thickness. The fourth dimension, time, or, more properly, the time-space interval, ...
— Wanderer of Infinity • Harl Vincent

... ordinary trials, such a state of expectation would have sent pulses of pleasurable anxiety among the nerves. But murderers! exterminating murderers!—clothed in mystery and utter darkness—these were objects too terrific for any family to contemplate with fortitude. Had these very murderers added to their functions those of robbery, they would have become less terrific; nine out of every ten would have found themselves discharged, as it were, from the roll of those who ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.

... contemplate taking is one with far-reaching issues—reaching away through time and beyond it. I advise you to try and gain a general idea of the meaning of the first half of St. Paul's {94} second letter to the Corinthian Church—to try and enter into its general spirit. Few things ...
— Letters to His Friends • Forbes Robinson

... pool shadowed on one side by alder-bushes still sprinkled with yellow leaves. It was a calm November day, and he no sooner saw the pool than he thought its still surface might be a mirror for him. He wanted to contemplate himself slowly, as he had not dared to do in the presence of the barber. He sat down on the edge of the pool, and bent forward to look earnestly at the ...
— Romola • George Eliot

... profit in the study of human nature. We may contemplate the characters of the great to arouse emulation, of the moderately endowed to suggest improvement, and of the weak to guard against their failures. Phrenology enables us to form correct estimates in each case, to praise without flattery and to criticise without injustice. ...
— How to Become Rich - A Treatise on Phrenology, Choice of Professions and Matrimony • William Windsor

... won more than a dollar,—which seems a good deal of money to a boy in his condition,—he began to lose. This was not so amusing. He had made up his mind that when his winnings were gone, he would stop playing; and the idea of stopping was not pleasant to contemplate. How could he give up a sport which surpassed everything else in the way of excitement? However, he determined to keep his resolution. And it was soon brought ...
— The Drummer Boy • John Trowbridge

... that period of Coleridge's life—a period, roughly speaking, of about ten years—which no admirer of his genius, no lover of English letters, no one, it might even be said, who wishes to think well of human nature, can ever contemplate without pain. His history from the day of his landing in England in August 1806 till the day when he entered Mr. Gillman's house in 1816 is one long and miserable story of self-indulgence and self- reproach, of lost opportunities, of neglected duties, of unfinished undertakings. His movements ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill

... before, under the influence of the colonel's philosophical words, they had felt in some manner resigned to a fate that nothing could avert. Now it was ten times more horrible and loathsome to contemplate, ten times harder ...
— The River of Darkness - Under Africa • William Murray Graydon

... chariot, or at most occupied in adorning their triumph. Perhaps their downfall is not far off." To speak of a positive downfall of exact sciences was a mistake. But we may fairly suppose that Gibbon did not contemplate anything beyond a relative change of position in the hierarchy of the sciences, by which history and politics would recover or attain to a dignity which was denied them in his day. In one passage Gibbon shows that he had dimly foreseen the possibility of the modern inquiries ...
— Gibbon • James Cotter Morison

... the ministers to resign they will themselves only incur the odium of having caused the national breach. In this view of the subject I shall be much aided if by the tenor of the President's message it is seen that we shall resent the breach of faith they contemplate. ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 2) of Volume 3: Andrew Jackson (Second Term) • James D. Richardson

... to the indefinite division of labour is to be found in the social, intellectual, and moral objections to specialization. It is not pleasant to contemplate England as one vast factory, an enlarged Manchester, manufacturing in semi-darkness, continual uproar, and at intense pressure for the rest of the world. Nor would the Continent of America, divided into square, numbered fields, ...
— The Unity of Civilization • Various

... embarked in one project after another, as accident or caprice might incline him, apparently without any forethought, consideration, or design. He seemed to form no plan, to live for no object, to contemplate no end, but was governed by a sort of blind and instinctive impulse, which led him to love danger, and to take a wild and savage delight in the performance of military exploits on their own account, and without regard to any ultimate end or aim to be accomplished by them. Thus, although ...
— Pyrrhus - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... one of interest in the surgeon's eyes. He regarded him as a damaged piece of clockwork, which it would be creditable to his skill to set agoing again. Graves and young MacTurk—Moore's sole other visitors—contemplated him in the light in which they were wont to contemplate the occupant for the time being of the dissecting-room at ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte

... hesitated a little, and colored faintly, and looked at the boy. He seemed to this woman—meekly resigned to old-age and maidenhood at thirty—a mere child, and like the son which another woman might have had, but the missing of whom was a shame to her to contemplate. Then she had said good-bye to him, and bade him be always a good boy, and had leaned over and kissed him. It was the kiss of a mother spiritualized by the innocent mystery and ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... me Both with thy name and with your destiny.' Whereat, she promptly and with laughing eyes: 'Our charity doth never shut the doors Against a just desire, except as she Who wills that all her court be like herself. I was a virgin sister in the world; And if thy mind doth contemplate me well, The being more fair will not conceal me from thee, But thou shalt recognize I am Piccarda, Who, stationed here among these other blessed, Myself am blessed in the lowest sphere. All our affections, that alone inflamed Are in the pleasure of the Holy Ghost, Rejoice at being of his ...
— Dante: "The Central Man of All the World" • John T. Slattery

... exactly. What they would have done had he not been available, they shuddered to contemplate. The county was so new a one that but three men had occupied the sheriff's office before Charley Mansell was elected. Of the three, the first had not collected taxes with proper vigor; the second was so steadily drunk that aggrieved farmers ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton

... for he was in reality profoundly indifferent to the girl, and his abrupt change of manner could in no way be ascribed to any change in his feeling for her. It was merely the reflex of his inner mood, and that sprang solely from joy over the permission he had given himself again to contemplate ...
— The Silent Places • Stewart Edward White

... our poor frontiers with the carcasses of her friends, with the wrecks of our insignificant villages, in which there is no gold? When, oppressed by painful recollection, I revolve all these scattered ideas in my mind, when I contemplate my situation, and the thousand streams of evil with which I am surrounded; when I descend into the particular tendency even of the remedy I have proposed, I am convulsed— convulsed sometimes to that ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur

... the other continued to contemplate the stuff in the intent, absorbed fashion of a suddenly startled scientific mind. At last he withdrew ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum

... and strife is quelled; when the vague fears and uncertainties of this period of transition are over, and the keen pangs and bloody sweat of the nation's new birth are all past—what will be the position of this American people? I tremble to contemplate it. It will be much like what I imagine the condition of a freed, redeemed soul to be, just escaped the thraldom, perplexity, and sin of this lower life, and entered on a purer, higher, freer plane of existence. Then comes reconstruction, reorganization, a getting acquainted with ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... in Helena's room draped in a lovely dressing-gown and wearing slippers with be-diamonded buckles. The Duchess evidently was ready for a long dressing-gown talk. She liked to contemplate herself in one of her new Parisian dressing-gowns, and she was quite willing to give Helena her share in the gratification of the sight. But Helena's thoughts were hopelessly away from dressing-gowns, even from her own. She became aware after a while ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy

... Palestine led indirectly to the ruin of the order of the Templars. The record is one of the dark episodes of history, encompassed with contradictions, full of surprises, painful to contemplate, whatever view may be taken, whichever ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... to treachery. The Monk adds this comment: "We English too [possumus et nos Angli] may derive an example here; to preserve our fidelity, &c. even to death." The MS. thus expresses its comment: "All English servants may contemplate an example of fidelity towards their own masters from ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 2 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler

... Herbert' might be another name for Trewlove, and that Trewlove under that name was gaining a short start from justice. But no: William had alluded to Mr. Herbert as to a youth sowing his wild oats. Impossible to contemplate Trewlove under this guise! Where then did Trewlove come in? Was he, perchance, 'Mr. Horrex,' ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... these Studies dates from many years back. As a youth I was faced, as others are, by the problem of sex. Living partly in an Australian city where the ways of life were plainly seen, partly in the solitude of the bush, I was free both to contemplate and to meditate many things. A resolve slowly grew up within me: one main part of my life-work should be to make clear the ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... toward the latter part of 1788 the young couple went to live with his father at the parsonage of Burnham Thorpe, and there made their home until he was again called into active service. "It is extremely interesting," say his biographers, "to contemplate this great man, when thus removed from the busy scenes in which he had borne so distinguished a part to the remote village of Burnham Thorpe;" but the interest seems by their account to be limited to the energy with which he dug in the garden, or, from sheer want ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan

... had recovered from his surprise, and began to contemplate the present state of affairs in their new aspect. It certainly was strange that this young girl should be a married woman, but so it was; and what then? "What then?" was the question which suggested itself to Zillah also. Would it make any ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille

... Wilfrid's way of thinking, one large objection against now attempting imperial federation. Its agitators contemplate a scheme immense, yet not sufficiently inclusive. They do not contemplate English-speaking solidarity. They purpose leaving out the majority of English-speakers—the American people. In this they do not follow Cecil Rhodes, ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... grizzled hair powdered all over with snow like the poll of some grand flunkey,—his long moustache loaded with it,—his eyes sparkling and twinkling, and his features set in a serio-comic expression,—all combined to form a picture that it was difficult to contemplate ...
— Bruin - The Grand Bear Hunt • Mayne Reid

... existence and disbelieve his power, and his name will be a scorn and idle word to the very children, and the old wives by their spinning-wheels. Then will be manifested some new attribute of divinity, of which as yet thou, nor I, nor any creature, may have an opportunity to contemplate. All this has lain in the purpose of God, in order to increase the happiness of His creatures; for all the other attributes of the Almighty, such as Infinity, Omnipresence, Omnipotence, awaken only awe in the mind of the finite; but those attributes which He manifests in His triumph ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold

... God, they are blinded by the radiance in the heavens, and they cannot find their way. God, therefore, shoots off arrows, by the glittering light of which they are guided. It is on account of the sinfulness of man, which the sun is forced to contemplate on his rounds, that he grows weaker as the time of his going down approaches, for sins have a defiling and enfeebling effect, and he drops from the horizon as a sphere of blood, for blood is the sign of corruption.[105] ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg

... sunshine, pouring joyously through all the gates and balconies of the Spanish horizon, had now inundated the fields with brilliant light. The wide sky, undimmed by a single cloud, seemed to grow wider and to recede further from the earth, in order to contemplate it, and rejoice in the contemplation, from a greater height. The desolate, treeless land, straw-colored at intervals, at intervals of the color of chalk, and all cut up into triangles and quadrilaterals, yellow or black, gray or pale green, bore a fanciful resemblance to a beggar's ...
— Dona Perfecta • B. Perez Galdos

... that that also is what was implied in the address. I may mention one other method alluded to in the address, and that is prayer to Almighty God. This ought to be, and must be, a religious enterprise. It is impossible for any man to contemplate slavery as it is without feeling intense indignation; and unless he have his heart near to God, and unless he be a man of prayer and devotional spirit, bad passions will arise, and to a very great extent neutralize his efforts to do good. How ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe

... what Master Richard did, following the Victorines but not altogether. He strove to serve God alike in all, and I count his life, therefore, the highest that I have ever known. He said that to dig, to talk over the gate with a neighbour, and to contemplate the Divine Essence, were all alike to serve God. He counted none wasted, for God Almighty had made the trinity of natures in His own image, and intended, therefore, a proper occupation for each. To refuse to dig or to talk was not ...
— The History of Richard Raynal, Solitary • Robert Hugh Benson

... now occupied with the question how with least danger Eppy and he were to meet. He did not contemplate treachery. At this time of his life he could not have respected himself, little as was required for that, had he been consciously treacherous; but no man who in love yet loves himself more, is safe from becoming a traitor: potentially he is one already. Treachery ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald

... point at which reaction generally commenced, for Thurston could not contemplate himself in that character—playing such a ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth

... fashionable circle. This, perhaps, is owing to my contemplating it from a distance, and my imagination lending it tints occasionally. Both actors and audience, contemplated from the pit of a theatre, look better than when seen in the boxes and behind the scenes. I like to contemplate society in this way occasionally, and to dress it up by the help of fancy, to my own taste. When I get in the midst of it, it is too apt to lose its charm, and then there is the trouble and ennui of being obliged to take an active part in the farce; but ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... if you can,—for one angry man is as good as another; restrain them from injury, promptly, completely, and with the least possible injury, just as in the case of maniacs,—and when you have got rid of them, or got them tied hand and foot so that they can do no mischief, sit down and contemplate them charitably, remembering that nine-tenths of their perversity comes from outside influences, drunken ancestors, abuse in childhood, bad company, from which you have happily been preserved, and for some of which you, ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various

... food for the living ones, is probably the most important role in the existence of these plants. Mushrooms, then, are to be given very high rank among the natural agencies which have contributed to the good of the world. When we contemplate the vast areas of forest in the world we can gain some idea of the stupendous work performed by the mushrooms in "house cleaning," and in "preparing food," work in which ...
— Studies of American Fungi. Mushrooms, Edible, Poisonous, etc. • George Francis Atkinson

... the future. They believed that a time would come when the universe would fall into ruins, [Footnote: Ib. 95.] but the intervening period did not interest them. Like many other philosophers, they thought that their own philosophy was the final word on the universe, and they did not contemplate the possibility that important advances in knowledge might be achieved by subsequent generations. And, in any case, their scope was entirely individualistic; all their speculations were subsidiary to the aim of rendering the life of the individual ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury

... in a world by ourselves; and the strange part of it was that we both seemed to realize the truth, although neither of us at that moment could contemplate ...
— Princess Zara • Ross Beeckman

... translate with perfect accuracy we must render, not 'that we should be called,' but 'in order that we should be called the sons of God.' The meaning then is that the love bestowed is the means by which the design that we should be called His sons is accomplished. What John calls us to contemplate with wonder and gratitude is not only the fact of this marvellous love, but also the glorious end to which it has been given to us and works. There seems no reason for slurring over this meaning in favour of the more vague 'that' of our version. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren

... Perchance they might be formulated thus: "If I am going to be drowned— if I am going to be drowned—if I am going to be drowned, why, in the name of the seven mad gods who rule the sea, was I allowed to come thus far and contemplate sand and trees? Was I brought here merely to have my nose dragged away as I was about to nibble the sacred cheese of life? It is preposterous. If this old ninny-woman, Fate, cannot do better than this, ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane

... alternate sway over him. This di-psychic quality was evidenced by the rapidity with which the expression of his eye would frequently change from cold calculation to a certain rapt observation, as if he looked up from a complicated problem to contemplate a glimpse of blue distance. Thus it was that he appreciated to the full the panorama spread out before him, though his mind was intent upon another subject; or rather, it might be said that the sight gave warmth and colouring to his ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins

... Did she suffer much?"—"She was ill a week, Sire; her Majesty suffered little bodily pain."—"Did she see that she was dying? Did she show courage?"—"A sign her Majesty made when she could no longer express herself leaves me no doubt that she felt her end approaching; she seamed to contemplate it without fear."—"Well!—well!" and then Napoleon much affected drew close to M. Horan, and added, "You say that she was in grief; from what did that arise?"—"From passing events, Sire; from your Majesty's position last year."—"Ah! she used to speak of me then?"—"Very often." ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne

... myself to contemplate such contingencies,' said Tancred. 'The subject is too high for me to touch with speculation. I must not even consider an event that had been pre-ordained by the Creator of the world ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli

... cruel girl, not on the whole ill-natured, yet such is human nature that this idea was actually the first that had given her satisfaction for many hours. How sorry Mr. Bates would be, when he found her dead, that he had dared to speak so angrily to her! It was, in a way, luxurious to contemplate the pathos of such an artistic death for herself, and its fine effect, by way of revenge, upon the guardian who had made himself ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall

... when one realized that his own character and hopes for the future often depended upon his latest employer's outward aspect. But the ulster in which Mr. Temple Barholm had presented himself was of a cut and material such as Pearson's most discouraged moments had never forced him to contemplate. The limited wardrobe in the steamer trunk was all new and all equally bad. There was no evening dress, no proper linen,—not what Pearson called "proper,"— no proper toilet appurtenances. What was Pearson ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... snapped. Still, she listened. He told her more of what the maps showed—how they indicated the location and size of the water mains in the streets, of the hydrants, the fire department houses, even the fire alarm boxes—everything, in short, which the fire underwriter desired to contemplate when passing on a risk submitted for the company's approval. By this time they had reached the other end of the big room and were ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble

... of wondering at Hannah and her children. To behold his maiden aunt in the character of a wife had been a standing marvel to Ishmael. To contemplate her now as a mother was an ever-growing delight to the genial boy. She had lost all her old-maidish appearance. She was fleshier, fairer, and softer to look upon. And she wore a pretty bobbinet cap and a bright-colored calico wrapper, and she busied herself ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth

... age are easily led into serious thoughts. Indeed, I can never contemplate the marriage of a young girl like yourself, without the intrusion of such thoughts into my mind. I have seen many bright skies bending smilingly over young hearts on the morning of their married life, that long ere noon ...
— Finger Posts on the Way of Life • T. S. Arthur

... imprisoning him and depriving him both of the power of paying his debts and supporting himself and his family, is an incident in Shakespeare's life which it requires the utmost allowance and consideration for the practice of the time and country to enable us to contemplate with equanimity—satisfaction ...
— Bacon is Shake-Speare • Sir Edwin Durning-Lawrence

... or of energy, or the merest accident sometimes has made one captain, while the other has gone into the ranks; but unless those men were created over again, you could not make between them the difference that the army regulations contemplate. Once off duty, there is nothing ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... you were fain to contemplate. And know it is built up of the divers contradictory truths, in the same fashion as all colours go to make up white. The little children of Viterbo know this, for having spun their tops striped with many colours on the ...
— The Well of Saint Clare • Anatole France

... most perilous mode of hardy industry to the extent to which it has been pushed by this recent people; a people who are still, as it were, but in the gristle, and not yet hardened into the bone of manhood. When I contemplate these things; when I know that the colonies in general owe little or nothing to any care of ours, and that they are not squeezed into this happy form by the constraints of watchful and suspicious government, ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster

... don't like sixpenny points, Horace, or quarrelling with old dragons about the odd trick. I will go and smoke a cigar on the terrace, and contemplate the silver Thames, the darkling woods, the starry hosts of heaven. I—I like smoking better than playing whist. [MILLIKEN ...
— The Wolves and the Lamb • William Makepeace Thackeray

... through the now crowded streets, where no one seems to notice her pallor. The fog is so thick that she is but dimly seen. She reaches the bridge over the Saint Martin Canal; here she stops, and leaning over the parapet seems to contemplate the dark water running below. While she stands there, we will see what is taking place in the house ...
— The Son of Monte Cristo • Jules Lermina

... and Owners will find this work valuable in furnishing fresh and useful suggestions. All who contemplate building or improving homes, or erecting structures of any kind, have before them in this work an almost endless series of the latest and best examples from which to make selections, thus saving ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 717, September 28, 1889 • Various

... absence of Life, and disease is the absence of health, so to enter into the Spirit of Life we require to contemplate it, where it is to be found, and not where it is not- -we are met with the old question, "Why seek ye the living among the dead?" This is why we start our studies by considering the cosmic creation, for it is there that we find the Life Spirit working through untold ages, not ...
— The Dore Lectures on Mental Science • Thomas Troward

... had turned over the pages of his life history, scanned them with a gloomy and critical eye, and cast them with decisive finality into the waste basket. He was about to begin a new book, the book of the future. It was pleasant to contemplate what he and Doris Cleveland together would write on those blank pages. To hope much, to be no longer downcast, to be able to look forward with eagerness. There was a glow in that like ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... to face here with the question whether scholarship pays, whether the educated Negro is to be encouraged to multiply and push forward determinedly on his mission. If there was but the present moment to contemplate, the race might be excused for pausing, for acquiescing in the limitations set for its education, and for saying the game is not worth the candle. But to-day does not end all. There is a future and that Negro is lacking in proper manhood who does not determine ...
— The Educated Negro and His Mission - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 8 • W. S. Scarborough



Words linked to "Contemplate" :   take, bethink, wonder, contemplative, deal, theologise, theologize, premeditate, think of, excogitate, entertain, reflect, introspect, contemplation, cogitate, consider, study, chew over, mull, flirt with, cerebrate, speculate



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