"Philosophical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... wing of the anarchistic party consisted rigorously of but two members, Adams and Bay Lodge. The conservative Christian anarchist, as a party, drew life from Hegel and Schopenhauer rightly understood. By the necessity of their philosophical descent, each member of the fraternity denounced the other as unequal to his lofty task and inadequate to grasp it. Of course, no third member could be so much as considered, since the great principle of contradiction could be expressed ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... to be philosophical, and all that, we shall never get you to sleep again. Don't talk any more, my Luise; but close your eyes, and see if you can't realize a dream; that will be the best answer ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... possibility of implication, be considered as having the smallest tendency to sully or impair a single particle of that celestial inheritance which he felt conscious of having a legitimate right to possess in undiminished lustre, If it should be thought, by the more calmly philosophical mind, that he might sometimes too soon take the alarm; let it, at least, not fail to be remembered, that the true votary of honour must never be, even once, a single moment ...
— The Life of the Right Honourable Horatio Lord Viscount Nelson, Vol. II (of 2) • James Harrison
... curious in the history of human knowledge than the establishment of extensive errors as to matters of fact, and the perverse tenacity with which they retain their hold on the public mind. In some cases it would almost seem that the pleasure which springs from genuine philosophical inquiry is subordinate to that which arises from the indolent process of taking things for granted. This applies peculiarly to the phenomena of the Trade-winds, respecting which many erroneous ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... would hardly have equalled the Imperial family of Greece seated, at a philosophical banquet, whether in the critical knowledge displayed of the science of eating in all its branches, or in the practical cost and patience with which they exercised it. The ladies, indeed, did not eat much of any one dish, but they tasted of almost all that were presented to them, ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... twanging of a samisen and the clanging of tamtams, is sung by three geishas. Kyoto brings in Osaka to admire her beauty, and sets a high price upon it. Osaka sends for jewels. Iris awakes and speculates in philosophical vein touching the question of her existence. She cannot be dead, for death brings knowledge and paradise joy; but she weeps. Osaka appears. He praises her rapturously—her form, her hair, her eyes, her mouth, her smile. Iris thinks him veritably Jor, but he says his name is "Pleasure." ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... Shakespeare as a dramatist, this criticism does not lead to any lasting disregard of their poetic quality or to the permanent acceptance of skill in dramatic structure as a chief element in their literary preeminence. Nor is such an element discoverable in their philosophical synthesis or their incidental wisdom, although some of the most brilliant criticism has exalted that wisdom or sought to formulate and expound their view of life. Concerning the essential elements of their greatness no real difference of opinion has ...
— The Facts About Shakespeare • William Allan Nielson
... you think proper on that matter,' remarked her philosophical ladyship, who held that man was a fighting animal, and must not have ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... on the south and Mystic River on the north. The tide was flowing in and covering the marsh lands. They gained the summit of Winter Hill, gazed upon the beautiful landscape, then turned southward toward Cambridge. Reaching the college, they entered the library and the room containing the philosophical instruments. Robert rubbed his knife on a magnet so he could pick up a needle by touching it with the blade. They had little time to spare, for they were to take supper with Mr. Samuel Adams. Berinthia informed him that Mr. Adams was not rich, that he was very ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin
... the Author has himself experienced, and of which the reader may find a description in one of the earlier volumes of the Manchester Philosophical Transactions, is applied figuratively to the following passage in the Aids ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... superintendence. There was a good deal also said in medical works of forty-day epochs in the formation of the foetus, not to mention that the alchemists expected more durable revolutions in forty days, which period they called the philosophical month. ...
— The Black Death, and The Dancing Mania • Justus Friedrich Karl Hecker
... that a human soul swinging desperately in mid-air should think about philosophical inconsistencies. But such extreme states are dangerous things to dogmatize about. Frequently they produce a certain useless and joyless activity of the mere intellect, thought not only divorced from hope but even from desire. And ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... sail; account, that al doe follow; judgement, that al doe reverence; wisdom, that al admire; learning, that stupified our scholes hearing a king borne, from tuelfe yeeres ald alwayes occupyed in materes of state, moderat in theological and philosophical disputationes, to the admiration of all that hard him, and speciallie them quha had spent al their ...
— Of the Orthographie and Congruitie of the Britan Tongue - A Treates, noe shorter than necessarie, for the Schooles • Alexander Hume
... second duel as well as in his first; as it was, the civilian placed a ball and a part of Mac's gold repeater in his stomach. A remarkable circumstance attended this shot, an account of which I sent home to the "Philosophical Transactions:" the surgeon had extracted the ball, and was going off, thinking that all was well, when the gold repeater struck thirteen in poor Macgillicuddy's abdomen. I suppose that the works must have been disarranged in some way ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... of those particular events whose interaction establishes a strong political current in a particular direction, it is perhaps unprofitable to inquire. Some will see in the chain of cause and effect only a chapter of accidents, presenting an interesting philosophical study, and nothing more; others, equally persuaded that nations do not effectively shape their mission in the world, will find in them the ordering of a Divine ruler, who does not permit the individual ...
— The Interest of America in Sea Power, Present and Future • A. T. Mahan
... incomplete by Samuel Norton. His share in the authorship of the different tracts varies. The titles of one or two will sufficiently indicate the nature of the subjects, and it can be seen that his studies included the philosophical stone, and other subjects receiving attention at the present time, ...
— Spadacrene Anglica - The English Spa Fountain • Edmund Deane
... the stylish young clerk, dropped in, and the conversation roamed over the universal topics of the day,—the hard times, the position of the employee in a corporation, etc. The clerk in the Baking Powder Trust was inclined to philosophical acceptance of present conditions. Abstractly there might not be much justice for the poor, but here in the new part of the country every man had his chance to be on top, to become a capitalist. There was the manager of the B. P. T. He had begun on ten dollars a week, but he had ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... Grundy's (John) Philosophical and Mathematical Reasons offered to the Publick, relating to the River Dee, J. Roberts, [Transcriber's ...
— The Annual Catalogue (1737) - Or, A New and Compleat List of All The New Books, New - Editions of Books, Pamphlets, &c. • J. Worrall
... an extremely interesting book was published bearing the following title: 'A Discourse concerning the Vegetation of Plants, spoken by Sir Kenelm Digby, at Gresham College, on the 23d of January 1660. (At a meeting of the Society for promoting Philosophical Knowledge by Experiments. London: Printed for John Williams, in Little Britain, over against St Botolph's Church, 1669.)' The author attributes plant-growth to the influence of a balsam which the air contains. This book is especially interesting as containing ...
— Manures and the principles of manuring • Charles Morton Aikman
... wine produced a great deal of lively and agreeable discourse, and a whole series of philosophical questions was discussed. At length they came to the strange dogmas of the stoics, called their Paradoxes; and to this in particular, That the good man only is free, and that all wicked men are slaves. The peripatetic, ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... awe-struck to venture an undigested reply to this speech; and the surgeon, after pausing a moment in a kind of philosophical disdain, continued,— ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... election cry for the Woman's Suffrage! Ah, yes! I have been in England," he added, with a merry twinkle in his little black eyes. "But you must realise that the unique position of woman with us is somewhat accidental. It is not the result of philosophical or moral conviction on the part of our men; it has been the natural outcome of circumstances, and a question of expediency rather than of ethics. So it was not really a 'test paper' for us at all! Our frequent wars in the past ...
— Seen and Unseen • E. Katharine Bates
... with Murray, and that the meeting was very pleasant may be inferred from Mr. Constable's letter of a few days later, in which he wrote to Murray, "It made my heart glad to be once more happy together as we were the other evening." The rest of Mr. Constable's letter referred to Hume's Philosophical Writings, which were tendered to Murray, but which he declined ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... may be even more astonished to find exceedingly democratic doctrines propounded, if not believed in, by trained statesmen of the Elizabethan school. He will be also apt to wonder that a more fitting time could not be found for such philosophical debate than the epoch at which both the kingdom and the republic were called upon to strain every sinew against the most formidable and aggressive despotism that the world had known since the fall of the ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... animism was crude and uncritical. In proportion as men learnt to reflect upon their experience, it was bound to be modified, and to submit to reactionary influences. Such was the case at the very beginning of philosophical and scientific enquiry—and such was the case also at the opening of the "modern" era. Speaking generally, it may be said that as knowledge of natural law extended, the idea of mental activities in external nature ...
— Nature Mysticism • J. Edward Mercer
... indeed, the fate of controvertists, even when they contend for philosophical or theological truth, to be soon laid aside and slighted. Either the question is decided, and there is no more place for doubt and opposition; or mankind despair of understanding it, and grow weary of disturbance, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... Parrish, president of the college, Wm. Dorsey, and Lucretia Mott. It was stated that the amount spent in land and buildings amounted to $205,000 and contributions were solicited for $100,000 additional to fully furnish the building, and supply a library, philosophical and astronomical apparatus. The building is a massive one of five stories, constructed of Pennsylvania granite, and appointed throughout, from dormitory, bathroom, recitation-hall, to parlor, kitchen and laundry, in the most refined and substantial taste. It is 400 feet in length, by 100 ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... he said. "And our civilization is a few thousand years old. And our species is somewhat older than that. We were in basic Guard training, and later in specialist philosophical training together. ...
— The Players • Everett B. Cole
... as this author had any serious philosophical belief, it would appear to have been that man was a slave of Chance, or Fate, or Destiny, or whatever it may be called. Sometimes he is the plaything of circumstances; sometimes a defenceless victim under "Fate's brazen hand," or of ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... the way, one of the necessary n's is missing. In this pleasing picture of an impossible age we note but three things requiring critical attention. (1) The term "super-race" in stanza 5, is too technically philosophical to be really poetic. (2) The rhyme of victory and eternally is not very desirable, because both the rhyming syllables bear only a secondary accent. (3) There is something grotesque and unconsciously comic in the prophecy "Then the lamb shall kiss the lion." Such grotesqueness is not to ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... your impudence utter." This is indubitable; for it rests not only on Mr. Bowles's assurance, but on that of Sir Fretful Plagiary, and nearly in the same words,—"and I shall treat it with exactly the same calm indifference and philosophical ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... soon slip round to some robust secular subject, public or domestic. I have mentioned Dr Drummond's long upper lip; all sorts of racial virtues resided there, but his mouth was also wide and much frequented by a critical, humorous, philosophical smile which revealed a view of life at once kindly and trenchant. His shrewd grey eyes were encased in wrinkles, and when he laughed his hearty laugh they almost disappeared in a merry line. He had a fund of Scotch stories, and one or two he was very fond of, at the expense of the Methodists, ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... consisted of a cup of coffee; and as the generous nectar warmed my veins my thoughts took a philosophical turn. It is fate who writes the was, the is, and the shall be. We have a proverb for every joy and misfortune. It is the only consolation fate gives us. It is like a conqueror asking the vanquished to witness the looting. All roads lead to Rome, and all proverbs are merely sign posts by ...
— Arms and the Woman • Harold MacGrath
... numerous confidences, helped more than once to throw dust, amiably replaced the post. She had never approved, but she was philosophical. She took life as she found it; although the fact stood out that Aileen, who was indifferent to men, ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... how we came to get hyar,' was the philosophical remark of the trapper; 'it's 'nongh to know that we are hyar, with a mighty slim chance of ever ...
— The Huge Hunter - Or, the Steam Man of the Prairies • Edward S. Ellis
... writing history, "He must make everything clear and bright, and bring it into the range of his analysis; his exaggeration chiefly applies to individual characters, not to general facts"; and the reason given for the decided preference manifested for his vivid record is not less true than philosophical,—"We learn so much from him enjoyably." It is precisely the lack of this pleasurable trait which makes the greater part of the annals of the past a dead letter to the world, and wins to romance, ballad, epic, fiction, relic, and poetry ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... work does not show by historic or philosophical development the evolution of the Negro mind as expressed in the achievements of the race in literature and art, it has some value. To have a publisher place before the public the sketches of so many prominent Negroes who might otherwise remain unknown to the public is a ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various
... of the heroic kind, as in the time of the Fronde; no vice, elegant and in full dress, as in that of the Regency; no "Directory" scepticism and foolish orgies. It was a mixture of activity, hesitation, and idleness—of brilliant utopias; of religious or philosophical aspiration; of vague enthusiasms mingled with certain instincts of a sort of Renaissance. Men were weary of past discords; of uncertain hopes, much as in the time of Petronius or Peregrinus. The materialist part of us hungered for the bouquet of roses which in the hands of Isis was to regenerate ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... my uncle Toby, looking up, and not regarding my father's interruption, who makes us all, and frames and puts us together in such forms and proportions, and for such ends, as is agreeable to his infinite wisdom,.—'Tis a pious account, cried my father, but not philosophical—there is more religion in it than sound science. 'Twas no inconsistent part of my uncle Toby's character—that he feared God, and reverenced religion.—So the moment my father finished his remark—my uncle Toby fell a whistling Lillabullero with ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... but fell a-coughing instead, and began to ascend to his room. He was agitated: and it was his principle to quit society whenever his emotions threatened to exceed philosophical moderation. ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... contact of Prakriti and strive for emancipation, even so should men seek to avoid women. It should be added that women, in almost all the dialects of India derived from Sanskrit, are commonly called Prakriti or symbols of Prakriti, thus illustrating the extraordinary popularity of the philosophical doctrine ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... was I could never uncover. I hung on and dug into great tomes of wisdom. I became interested and gradually took up with his speculation; for all my love of action I found that I had a strong subcurrent for the philosophical. ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... 242: She is more frequently called Sthenoboea, or Stheneboea, as by Apollodor. ii. 3,1; Serv. on AEn. v. 118. Fulgentius, iii. praef., agrees with Homer, giving a ridiculously philosophical ...
— The Iliad of Homer (1873) • Homer
... course of lectures is the Philosophical History of the World. And by this must be understood, not a collection of general observations respecting it, suggested by the study of its records and proposed to be illustrated by its facts, but universal history itself. To gain a clear idea, at the outset, of the nature of our task, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... sedate and philosophical Kitty, "I love to go to Grandma's, and yet I hate to leave you all, and yet, I can't do one without ...
— Marjorie at Seacote • Carolyn Wells
... him, and fairly hugged him. But he put me aside with a gentle and philosophical calm. "Ah, eet is nothing, Pancho. It is, believe me, all the same a hundred years to come, and where are you, then? The earth he turn round, and then come el temblor, the earthquake, and there you are! Bah! eet is not of the board that I have asked you to come; it is something ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte
... passionate admirer of nature, and it is not improbable but he drew his own character in that description which he gives of a philosophical and retired life, at the latter end of the first Book ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. III • Theophilus Cibber
... scaffold. The poem of Lucretius caused no civil wars in Rome; the writings of Spinosa did not excite the same troubles in Holland as the disputes of Gomar and D'Arminius. In short, we can defy the enemies to human reason to cite a single example, which proves in a decisive manner that opinions purely philosophical, or directly contrary to superstition, have ever excited disturbances in the state. Tumults have generally arisen from theological notions, because both princes and people have always foolishly believed they ought to take a part in them. There is nothing so dangerous ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 2 • Baron D'Holbach
... though his speculations are deformed by an undue attachment to certain leading ideas, which, harmonizing with his habits of mind, had acquired an excessive preponderance in the course of his long and uncontroverted meditations. He possessed extensive knowledge, and his works bespeak a philosophical spirit; but their great and characteristic excellence proceeds from that glow of fresh and youthful admiration for everything that is amiable or august in the character of man, which, in Necker's heart, survived all the blighting vicissitudes it had passed through, combining, ...
— On the Choice of Books • Thomas Carlyle
... recent visit to America, who passed resolutions of thanks, after listening to his subtle infidelity, are, in the light of 2 John 10, partakers of his sin. And then there is that Anti-christian system, known by the name of Christian Science. In its so-called philosophical, in reality, satanic utterances, it opposes the revelation of God and denies that Jesus Christ is come into the flesh. That evil book, "Science and Health," to which we readily accord inspiration, not from above, but from below, teaches "The Virgin Mary ...
— The Work Of Christ - Past, Present and Future • A. C. Gaebelein
... critic, admirer, and disciple of Schubert in the province of song, was in most respects a man of far different type. The son of a man of wealth and position, his mind and tastes were cultivated from early youth with the utmost care. Schumann is known in Germany no less as a philosophical thinker and critic than as a composer. As the editor of the Neue Zeitschrift fuer Musik, he exercised a powerful influence over contemporary thought in art-matters, and established himself both as a keen and incisive thinker ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... you'd have ended up about the same," said Bob Tidball, cheerfully philosophical. "It ain't the roads we take; it's what's inside of us that makes us turn out the ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... no notion that there was anything peculiar or strange in the bond which united its adherents to Christ. Hence they called His followers 'Christians,' just as they would have called Herod's followers 'Herodians,' in the political world, or Aristotle's followers 'Aristotelians' in the philosophical world. Still, in their groping way, they bad put their finger on the fact that the one power that held this heterogeneous mass together, the one bond that bound up 'Jew and Gentile, barbarian, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... for it. He had, in fact, done so, and was beaten for his pains! This was a h—l of a country, anyhow, thought he; after this he would stick to the good old ways of his native land, and have a whole skin to his credit. The teachings of a long line of philosophical ancestors were by no means lost upon this their up-to-date descendant. No more monkey tricks ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald
... delivered this version of the facts with a languid composure that contrasted deliciously with Richard's heat in telling the story his way (to be sure, Sir Charles had got Huntercombe and Bassett, and it is easier to be philosophical on the right side of the boundary hedge), and wound up with a sort of corollary: "Dick Bassett suffers by his father's vices, and I profit by mine's virtues. ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... philosophical evolution the consideration is mainly from the objective point of view, and this is in conformity with the intellectual evolution of reason, since the mind is first occupied with the knowledge of things. In accordance with tradition and the logic of things, ...
— Myth and Science - An Essay • Tito Vignoli
... had no doubt left my perceptive powers in a state of erethism. I remember that dinner table with extraordinary vividness even now. My dear wife's sweet anxious face peering at me from under the pink lamp shade, the white cloth with its silver and glass table furniture—for in those days even philosophical writers had many little luxuries—the crimson-purple wine in my glass, are photographically distinct. At the end of it I sat, tempering nuts with a cigarette, regretting Ogilvy's rashness, and denouncing the shortsighted timidity ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells
... corps of native operatives was set up by Philosophical, to upset the stasis and hold a core of knowledge till the barbaric period following the collapse of one of the old empires was over. One civilization on one continent was chosen, because it was felt ...
— Millennium • Everett B. Cole
... curious birds in hopes of introducing the breed into England, and had taken great pains in doing them over with gum arabic, and in packing them in charcoal, according to a receipt I had seen in the gazette from the Edinburgh Philosophical Journal. But these were detained in the depot, instead of being placed under a hen; which utterly ruined all my hopes of rearing a new species of birds in England. Titled personages in London interested themselves in behalf of the collection, but all in vain. ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... only so long as sin continues, sin not necessarily in the theological, but always in the philosophical sense, though many times in the sense of both. The moment the violation ceases, the moment one comes into perfect harmony with the law, the cause of the suffering ceases; and though there may be residing ...
— In Tune with the Infinite - or, Fullness of Peace, Power, and Plenty • Ralph Waldo Trine
... it be a conductor of electricity. Dr. McClure's statements have excited considerable comment in England. The phenomena of tests by the divining-rod are not by any means new. They have never been described from a scientific point-of-view, nor has any philosophical explanation of them ever been advanced, but there is no question whatever of their existence, and of their being now regarded by the most advanced scientists as beyond the region of chicanery and imposture. Mr. W. J. Jenks, in a recent lecture on "The Protection ...
— The American Architect and Building News, Vol. 27, Jan-Mar, 1890 • Various
... documents of all kinds—the crude materials which it is the province of the historian to digest. The author, notwithstanding, has a clear historical head; his narrative, when he permits it to flow uninterrupted, is animated; his reflections generally philosophical; his summaries of individual character acute and distinct; and so peculiar have been his sources of information, that henceforward no man will sit down to write upon this era of the history of India, or of Central Asia, before carefully consulting ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 425 - Volume 17, New Series, February 21, 1852 • Various
... had presently overtaken a little train of white-robed men moving forward at a solemn pace, whom the painter recognized as the philosophical and religious fraternity of the Neo-Pythagoreans, when a small knot of men and women in the greatest excitement came rushing past as if they were mad. The men wore the loose red caps of their Phrygian land; the women carried bowls full of fruits. Some beat small drums, others clanged cymbals, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... of the Shrew." But with Calderon the theme is lifted altogether out of the atmosphere of comedy, and is worked up with poetic sentiment and a touch of mysticism into a symbolic drama of profound and universal philosophical significance. ...
— Life Is A Dream • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... condition of mind in which we happen to be. In order that you may understand the importance of the adventure I am about relating to you, it will be necessary for me to picture the state of mind which I was in at the time it happened; this will be a sort of philosophical and psychological preamble." ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard
... knowledge (seeing Aristotle hath failed in this main point; and taught little other than terms in the rest) have so retrenched their minds from the following and overtaking of truth, and so absolutely subjected themselves to the law of those philosophical principles; as all contrary kind of teaching, in the search of causes, they have condemned either for phantastical, or curious. Both doth it follow, that the positions of heathen philosophers are ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... himself, through a different branch. On public grounds, his claim stood, perhaps, on a footing equally good with that of Oubacha, whilst his personal qualities, even in those aspects which seemed to a philosophical observer most odious and repulsive, promised the most effectual aid to the dark purposes of an intriguer or a conspirator, and were generally fitted to win a popular support precisely in those points where Oubacha ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... the fact that they praised something. They heaped curses upon man, but they used man merely as a foil. The things they wished to praise by comparison were the energies of Nature. Man was to them what talk and fashion were to Carlyle, what philosophical and religious quarrels were to Omar, what the whole race after practical happiness was to Schopenhauer, the thing which must be censured in order that somebody else may be exalted. It was merely a recognition of the fact ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton
... better made by his neighbors. This philosophical utterance occurs in one of those black-letter volumes which I purchased with the money left me by my Aunt Susan (of blessed memory!). Even if Alice and I had not fully made up our minds, after nineteen years of planning and figuring, what kind of a house ...
— The House - An Episode in the Lives of Reuben Baker, Astronomer, and of His Wife, Alice • Eugene Field
... noticed," said Mrs. Partington on New Year's Day, dropping her voice to the key that people adopt when they are disposed to be philosophical or moral; "I've always noticed that every year added to a man's life is apt to make him older, just as a man who goes a journey finds, as he jogs on, that every mile he goes brings him nearer where he is going, ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... that he could not do this without manifesting some of the traits of the Alford Graham who years before had studied the mirthful Grace St. John with the hope of analyzing her power and influence. And had he been wholly indifferent to her, and as philosophical and cynical as once it was his pride to think he was, she would still have remained an absorbing study. Her sudden and awful bereavement had struck her strong and exceptional spiritual nature with the shattering force ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... embryological thought at a time when those currents were both numerous and shifting. Like every other period, the seventeenth century was one of transition. It was an era of explosive growth in scientific ideas and techniques, suffused with a creative urge engendered by new philosophical insights and the excitement of discovery. During the seventeenth century, the ideas relating to the generation and development of organisms were quite diverse, and there were seldom criteria other than enthusiasm or philosophical predilection ...
— Medical Investigation in Seventeenth Century England - Papers Read at a Clark Library Seminar, October 14, 1967 • Charles W. Bodemer
... the teaching of these sects for the benefit of his Roman readers according to a technical classification borrowed from his environment, i.e. he represents them as three philosophical schools of the Greek type, each holding different views about fate and Providence and the nature of the soul and its immortality. But just as this is demonstrably a misleading coloring of the difference between the sections of the Jewish people, so ...
— Josephus • Norman Bentwich
... Wherever he went he carried with him an atmosphere of joy. Fresh ingenuousness and glowing enthusiasm were part of his charm. There was a rich vein of the romantic in his character, but the cast of his mind was philosophical. He had no patience with superficiality masquerading as wisdom, and was quick to detect a fallacy in reasoning. A shining trait in him was truthfulness. He would never compromise or palter with the truth, either by way of suppression, or exaggeration, or casuistical refinement. ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... "Ah, here is the philosophical stranger again;" DeLong exclaimed, catching sight of Kennedy. "Perhaps he can enlighten us on how to win at roulette ...
— The Silent Bullet • Arthur B. Reeve
... Marcolina modestly declined to continue the topic, declaring that the others at table, and above all her uncle, would much rather hear some details of a newly recovered friend's travels than listen to a philosophical disquisition. ...
— Casanova's Homecoming • Arthur Schnitzler
... Faust" is by no means a philosophical or moral tract. It is, first of all and throughout, a living, breathing work of art, instinct with beauty and faithful in its every line to the principle laid down by its author in the preface to one of his earlier volumes: "Poetical imagination ...
— Mr. Faust • Arthur Davison Ficke
... comprehensive survey of the whole scene, analogous, in some respects, to that which direct and actual vision would afford us, if we could look down upon it from the eagle's point of view. It is, however, somewhat humiliating to our pride of intellect to reflect that long-continued philosophical investigations and learned scientific research are, in such a case as this, after all, in some sense, only a sort of substitute for wings. A human mind connected with a pair of eagle's wings would have solved the mystery of Egypt in a week; whereas science, philosophy, ...
— Cleopatra • Jacob Abbott
... to our philosophical readers to determine which of the two manifestations was the most dangerous: we hope their displeasure against either will not be very violent; for we have but too frequently observed the self-same dispositions animate bright eyes and open coral lips. Women ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... the beer from the can. "Those are the characters involved in our play. I have a plan. That's why I told Space Patrol to send me a brand-new second lieutenant—young, strong, fairly handsome—and expendable. I hope you can be philosophical about ...
— —And Devious the Line of Duty • Tom Godwin
... this discrimination into Something and Nothing may be sufficiently intelligible to the student of Metaphysics, it may not be so to the Reader unaccustomed to Philosophical Speculation. For the purpose, therefore, of rendering it somewhat clearer, I will point out the manner in which it exhibits itself in respect to the Constitution of the External ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... praise and poems of worship, collected during the Vedic period which dates from approximately 2000 B.C. to 1400 B.C.[45] Following this work, or possibly contemporary with it, is the Brahmanic literature, which is partly ritualistic (the Br[a]hma[n.]as), and partly philosophical (the Upanishads). Our especial interest is {13} in the S[u]tras, versified abridgments of the ritual and of ceremonial rules, which contain considerable geometric material used in connection with altar construction, and also numerous examples of rational numbers ...
— The Hindu-Arabic Numerals • David Eugene Smith
... so large and liberal, as to consist of seven spacious buildings, and to contain two hundred and fifty apartments for officers and students. It has an excellent library of about 17,000 volumes, a philosophical apparatus, and a museum of natural history. The average number of students is about two hundred and sixty. Admission into this college requires a previous knowledge of mathematics, Latin, and Greek. All the students have equal rights; and each class has peculiar ...
— Travels in North America, From Modern Writers • William Bingley
... very glad that the poor fellows, whoever they were, got away; and for ourselves, we are not worse off than we should have been had we not discovered them," observed the philosophical doctor. "Don't let us be cast down. If one vessel comes, so may another; and next time we may be more fortunate. And now I advise that without loss of time we make the best of our way back to ...
— The Voyages of the Ranger and Crusader - And what befell their Passengers and Crews. • W.H.G. Kingston
... bedsteads, boots and shoes, sculls, boats, furs, hair manufactures, lithographs, perfumery, soaps, surgical instruments, cutlery, dentistry, locks, India rubber goods, machinery, agricultural implements, stoves, kitchen ranges, safes, sleighs, maps, globes, philosophical instruments, grates, furnaces, fire-arms of all descriptions, models of railroads, locomotives, &c. You may add to these fine specimens of all our produce, as cotton, sugar, tobacco, hemp, and the mineral ores—iron, ...
— Young Americans Abroad - Vacation in Europe: Travels in England, France, Holland, - Belgium, Prussia and Switzerland • Various
... four volumes, and was printed at Basel, every proof-sheet being jealously destroyed, so that there are actually but three copies in existence. To the nine volumes of his works already published (Leipzig, E. W. Fritzsch, 1871-'73) will be added a tenth, containing brief essays and sketches of a philosophical character, and (it is to be hoped) the four volumes ...
— Life of Wagner - Biographies of Musicians • Louis Nohl
... came out as a great physicist, Franklin was seventy years old when he arrived in Paris. His sprightly good-nature, the bold subtilty of his mind cloaked beneath external simplicity, his moderation in religion and the breadth of his philosophical tolerance, won the world of fashion as well as the great public, and were a great help to the success of his diplomatic negotiations. Quartered at Passy, at Madame Helvetius', he had frequent interviews with the ministers under a veil of secrecy and precaution ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... such the chain of sequences to be traced in the moral history of every man, who, with a conviction upon his mind of what is right, has followed the downward course which gradually led him astray from virtue. When we trace such a process backwards in a philosophical point of view, the question still recurs,—what was the first step, or that by which the mind was led into the course which thus terminated in favour of vice. In the wonderful chain of sequences, which has been established in the mental constitution, ...
— The Philosophy of the Moral Feelings • John Abercrombie
... the large white mound which represented the person of Mrs. Flushing. The day had been long and very hot, and now that all the colours were blotted out the cool night air seemed to press soft fingers upon the eyelids, sealing them down. Some philosophical remark directed, apparently, at St. John Hirst missed its aim, and hung so long suspended in the air until it was engulfed by a yawn, that it was considered dead, and this gave the signal for stirring of legs and murmurs about sleep. The white mound moved, finally lengthened itself ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf
... of the petty vexations to which he had exposed himself. He had taken over a business which he did not understand, and naturally found the technicalities troublesome, for though, as has been seen, his own tendencies were literary, he had not soared so high as a philosophical romance, while his scholarship, more brilliant than profound, was not always equal to the 'unseen passages' from out-of-the-way authors with which Holroyd had embellished ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... year or so Poe lived quietly at Fordham, guarded by the watchful care of Mrs. Clemm,—writing little, but thinking out his philosophical prose poem of "Eureka," which he deemed the crowning work of his life. His life was as abstemious and regular as his means were small. Gradually, however, as intercourse with fellow literati re-aroused his dormant energies, he began to meditate a fresh start in the world. His ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... that we have successfully introduced certain ideas belonging to an elementary science by applying them metaphorically to some new class of phenomena. It becomes an important philosophical question to determine in what degree the applicability of the old ideas to the new subject may be taken as evidence that the new phenomena are physically similar to ...
— Five of Maxwell's Papers • James Clerk Maxwell
... native of Vilna, awakened the dormant Hebrew lyre by the sonorous rhymes of his "Songs in the Sacred Tongue" (Shire Sefat Kodesh, Vol. I., Leipsic, 1842). In this volume solemn odes celebrating events of all kinds alternate with lyrical poems of a philosophical content. The unaccustomed ear of the Jew of that period was struck by these powerful sounds of rhymed biblical speech which exhibited greater elegance and harmony than the Mosaid of Wessely, the Jewish Klopstock. [2] His compositions, which are marked by thought rather than ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow
... impossible. But this is his manner of approaching and surrounding a question. The lights which he throws on his subject are indirect, but they are not the less real for that. He has no intention of proving a thesis by a cut-and-dried argument; nor does he imagine that a great philosophical problem can be tied up within the limits of a definition. If he has analyzed a proposition or notion, even with the severity of an impossible logic, if half-truths have been compared by him with other half-truths, if he has cleared up or advanced ...
— Theaetetus • Plato
... respectable, and so is the adjutant—or comparatively almost respectable, let us say; you can't be too cautious in giving a personal character to a stork. For long, long, the stork has enjoyed a reputation for solemn wisdom, for philosophical dignity. Now for the first time I venture to question this reputation—to impeach the stork as a humbug. It is easy to achieve a reputation for profound and ponderous wisdom, so long as one looks very solemn and says nothing. This is the stork's recipe. Go ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 27, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... the social consciousness and the social mind have been adopted by writers on social topics who are not at all concerned with their philosophical implications or legitimacy. We are just now seeing the first manifestations of two new types of sociology which call themselves, the one rural and the other urban sociology. Writers belonging to these two schools are making studies of what they call the "rural" ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... are great and ever greater. They come from the general worldliness of all things and everybody in this age of unprecedentedly rapid and splendid material development. They are increased by the growth of speculative infidelity whether of the philosophical or scientific phase. They spring out of everything which lowers the Bible from that supreme and sovereign consideration by which alone it can hold the place in education which the Old Testament economy gave it, and which all the books of all the other book-religions of the world ...
— Colleges in America • John Marshall Barker
... This ancient philosophical treatise, together with the mystical passage from the original text of Esdras and the selected verses from the Apocrypha, formed all Alwyn's stock of reading for the rest of his journey,—the rhapsodical lines of the Prophet he knew by heart, as one knows a favorite poem, and he often caught ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... the field in which we may look for such cases. He finds pseudologia phantastica a symptom, not only of hysteria, alcoholism, paranoia, but also of sex repression, and neurasthenia. He takes a more philosophical view of the subject than previous authors. He understands by pseudologia phantastica not merely the bare habit of telling fantastic lies, and what they bring forth, but rather the yielding up of consciousness of reality in the presence of the ...
— Pathology of Lying, Etc. • William and Mary Healy
... Philautus, Wherein is presented a Philosophical combat betweene Hector and Achilles, discovering in foure discourses, interlaced with divers delightfull Tragedies, The vertues necessary to be incident in every gentleman: had in question at the siege of Troy betwixt sundrie Grecian and Trojan ...
— Catalogue of the Books Presented by Edward Capell to the Library of Trinity College in Cambridge • W. W. Greg
... betaking himself afresh to the living strength, he began—not directly to fight himself, but to try to argue himself right, persuading himself on philosophical grounds that it was better to forgive his son; that it was the part of a wise man, the part of one who had respect to his own dignity, to abstain from harshness, nor drive the youth to despair: he was his own son—he must do what he could ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... scripture on natural objects is as strictly philosophical as that of the Newtonian system. Perhaps more so. For it is not only equally true, but it is universal among mankind, and unchangeable. It describes facts of appearance. And what other language would have been consistent with the divine wisdom? The inspired writers ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... any rate, his apoplectic corpse. In all New York, I dare say, there is no public eating house so near to the far-flung outposts, the Galapagos Islands of virtue. But one somehow feels that for Munich, at least, the Odeon is just a bit tolerant, just a bit philosophical, just a bit Bohemian. One even imagines taking an American show girl there without being warned (by a curt note in one's serviette) that the head waiter's family ...
— Europe After 8:15 • H. L. Mencken, George Jean Nathan and Willard Huntington Wright
... "How philosophical! Quite like one of the epigrams of your chum, Mark Overman, of whose cruel tongue you're so fond. I wonder you don't make Mr. Overman a deacon in the new ...
— The One Woman • Thomas Dixon
... in his narrative, Dom Gregory, as those happy few who are familiar with his manuscript in the Abbey of Bonne Aventure are aware, diverges from the full current of his story to indulge in some philosophical reflections upon the character of ...
— If I Were King • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... man who sat facing him at the table, "What is this of Tissot?" he continued. "Can it be," with a side-glance at the newcomer, "that we have lost our—I may not call him our quintessence or alcahest—rather shall I say our baser ore, that at the virgin touch of our philosophical stone blushed into ruddy gold? And burned ever brighter and hotter in her presence! Tissot gone, and with him all those fair ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... not be twitched and pulled to effect a wider purification? It began to be hinted that the use of wine in the sacred offices of religion could not be countenanced, if its employment elsewhere were the monster iniquity it was shown to be. That philosophical friend of humanity, Mr. Stellato, began to denounce the consumers of animal food with every unpleasant illustration the shambles could be made to supply. In very select companies of sympathizers, as well as in the Graduating Circle of Progressive Gladiators, it was known that Mrs. Romulus ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... philosophical calm restrained her emotions about Lydia. She was in positive beauty and charm all that poor Marietta had not been, and she was to have in the way of backing and management all that poor Marietta had lacked. It seemed to Mrs. Emery that her whole life had ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... notes] I think of nothing but myself— I am a dreadful egoist. But what has made you turn so philosophical all at once? ...
— Plays by August Strindberg, Second series • August Strindberg
... galvanism; but it would have been wonderful indeed if any restoration had taken place after more than two hours of suspended animation. John Hunter, according to the account, does not seem to have been very communicative on the subject, even to his philosophical ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 49, Saturday, Oct. 5, 1850 • Various
... room, and abandoned the interior of watches for outdoors. He went with Dan, and they sat on a bench in Washington Square. Dan had not changed much; he was stalwart, and had a dignity that was inclined to relax into a grin. Kenwitz was more serious, more intense, more learned, philosophical and socialistic. ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... and man, above all by its record of the peerless excellence of our Lord Jesus Christ, and of the provision made through Him for the supply of man's deepest wants, presents a marvellous contrast to the Veda, to the great epic poems of the Hindus, to their philosophical treatises and their Puranas. I know a good deal of what has been said to show that the characteristics of the Bible may be accounted for on merely human principles, but the certain facts of the case refute, to my mind, the arguments adduced. Max Mueller says in one ...
— Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877 • James Kennedy
... threshold of Shelley's poetic achievement, and it will be well before going further to underline the connection, which persists all through his work and is already so striking in 'Queen Mab', between his poetry and his philosophical and religious ideas. ...
— Shelley • Sydney Waterlow
... glittering dresses, Their large black eyes, and soft seraphic cheeks, Crimson as cleft pomegranates, their long tresses, The gesture which enchants, the eye that speaks, The innocence which happy childhood blesses, Made quite a picture of these little Greeks; So that the philosophical beholder Sigh'd for their sakes—that they ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... more than a rhetorical exercise. It was the revival of learning and the Universities, in particular that of Bologna, which inspired the dolce stil nuovo, of which the first exponent was Guido Giunicelli. Love was now treated from a philosophical point of view: hitherto, the Provencal school had maintained the thesis that "sight is delight," that love originated from seeing and pleasing, penetrated to the heart and [107] occupied the thoughts, after passing through the eyes. ...
— The Troubadours • H.J. Chaytor
... not only read your Book call'd, The Lady's Monthly Director, but have tasted many elegant Dishes of Meat, ordered by the Receipts in it; but I think, as you are a philosophical Gentleman, you should have taken a little more Notice of the preservation of Flesh from Putrefaction: For in many places I have set down to a Dinner which has sent me out of the Room by the very smell of it; even, though I am so much of the French Taste, that I can bear the Fumette. ...
— The Country Housewife and Lady's Director - In the Management of a House, and the Delights and Profits of a Farm • Richard Bradley
... apparent. Christ crucified, justification purely by faith, and the effectual influences of the Holy Ghost, ... were ideas at least very faintly impressed at that day on Christian minds. It is vain to expect Christian faith to abound without Christian doctrine. Moral and philosophical and monastical instructions will not effect for men what is expected from evangelical doctrine. And if the faith of Christ was so much declined (and its decayed state ought to be dated from about the year 270) we ...
— The Gospel Day • Charles Ebert Orr
... noble as that of dramatic poetry, ennobled by such genius, associated with such recollections, so lofty in its purpose, so irresistible in its effects, should have fallen into comparative decline in this country in the brightest era of its literary, philosophical, and political achievements, is one of those singular and melancholy circumstances of which it seems impossible at first sight to give any explanation. Since the deep foundations of the English mind were stirred by the Reformation, what an astonishing ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... Venture it upon his neighbour, if he will let him venture the making ourselves better without any danger We confess our ignorance in many things We do not easily accept the medicine we understand What are become of all our brave philosophical precepts? What we have not seen, we are forced to receive from other hands Whatever was not ordinary diet, was instead of a drug Whimpering is offensive to the living and vain to the dead Who does not boast of some rare ...
— Widger's Quotations from The Essays of Montaigne • David Widger
... merely part of your disposition to make an antedeluvian point of view lest you should do injustice to the megatherium. But now I have given ear to him in his proper person, I find him really a sort of philosophical-allegorical-mystical believer, and yet with a sharp dialectic point, so that any argumentative rattler of peas in a bladder might soon be pricked in silence by him. The mixture may be one of the Jewish prerogatives, ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... of wine; removed from her seat by the vapours of a burning fever.... She was seen to dismay and confound all her faculties by the only biting of a sick dog, and to contain no great constancy of discourse, no virtue, no philosophical resolution, no contention of her forces, that might exempt her from the subjection ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson
... with peculiar propriety and force from those whose valor, wisdom and virtue have done so much in ameliorating the condition of mankind. And it is a duty, as I conceive, that devolves particularly on you, from your known philosophical and enlarged view of subjects, and from the principles you have professed and practiced through a long and useful life, pre-eminently distinguished as well by being foremost in establishing on the broadest basis the rights of man, and the liberty and independence ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 3, 1918 • Various
... episodes of life appear to resolve themselves naturally into first occasions. Those times at which we first feel, think, act, or experience in any given way, form the true stepping-stones of life. Memory is one of the most capricious of the faculties. There is a well-known philosophical theory to the effect that nothing is actually forgotten or forgetable which has once imprinted itself upon the mind. But, bar myself, I do not remember to have encountered anybody who professed to recall his very earliest triumph in ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... and rifled the pocket of his paletot of his cigar-case and matches, and spluttered a curse or two, according to old Nollekins' receipt for easing the mind, and on the door-steps lighted his cheroot, and became gradually more philosophical. ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... having breakfasted, disentangled themselves from the Bedlam of a troop-deck meal, and gained the upper air, they were in better humour to regard their surroundings from a philosophical, if not an appreciative, standpoint. The depressing drizzle had ceased, the clouds were breaking, and the shore, except for the mist-filled nullahs and the cloud-wrapped Asiatic hills, showed up more clearly ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie |
