"Speculate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... high northern latitude in Baffin's Bay, who appear to be so isolated, and so unconnected with their brethren of South Greenland, as to justify us in connecting them rather with the numerous ruined habitations found westward as far as Melville Island, and lead the mind to speculate upon some more northern region,—some terra incognita, yet to be visited by us,—encourages us, aye, urges us not to halt in our exploration. Humanity and science are united in the cause: where one falters, let a love for the other ...
— Stray Leaves from an Arctic Journal; • Sherard Osborn
... back through Vernor Vinge's "True Names" (see the {Bibliography} in Appendix C) to John Brunner's 1975 novel "The Shockwave Rider"). Gibson's near-total ignorance of computers and the present-day hacker culture enabled him to speculate about the role of computers and hackers in the future in ways hackers have since found both irritatingly na"ive and tremendously stimulating. Gibson's work was widely imitated, in particular by the short-lived but innovative "Max Headroom" TV series. See {cyberspace}, ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... day! The weariness! The sense of all being finished! She did not even allow herself to speculate as to what Hector was doing with himself. She must never let her thoughts turn that way at all if she could help it. She must devote herself to Josiah and to getting through the time. But something had gone out of her life which could never come back, and also something had come in. She was awake—she, ...
— Beyond The Rocks - A Love Story • Elinor Glyn
... done and instantly. He gently closed the door before answering the third question. In his nervousness he spoke in English, advancing to the middle of the room. Impossible to see the woman to whom he hissed this alarming threat-he only could speculate ...
— Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... the American rebellion so soon after he had ignominiously washed his hands of it, sealed forever his own social doom. That, it is certain, was most severe and drastic. The money paid him by the British Government was accursed as were the thirty silver pieces of Iscariot; for his passion to speculate ruined him financially some time before the end of his life, and he breathed his last amid comparative poverty and the dread ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... researches enable me to discover the exquisite pencil that paints the flower of the field? and have I ever detected the secret that gives their brilliant dye to the ruby and the emerald, or the art that enamels the delicate shell?—I observe the sagacity of animals—I call it instinct, and speculate upon its various degrees of approximation to the reason of man; but, after all, I know as little of the cogitations of the brute as he does of mine. When I see a flight of birds overhead, performing their evolutions, or steering their course to some ...
— MacMillan's Reading Books - Book V • Anonymous
... gathering feet about the house. Almost on tiptoe he entered the lofty hall, high above the first story. The dust lay thick on a large marble table—but what was that?—a streak across it, brushed sharply through the middle of the dust! It was strange! But he would not wait to speculate on the agent! The room to which the earl had directed him was on the first floor, and he ascended to it at once—by the great oak staircase which went up the sides ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... world's eye, are dear to us all;—are, doubtless, intended to be dear. Only in acknowledging so much, let us remember that there are prices at which these good things may be too costly. Therefore, being desirous, too, of telling the truth in this matter, I must confess that Lucy did speculate with some regret on what it would have been to be Lady Lufton. To have been the wife of such a man, the owner of such a heart, the mistress of such a destiny—what more or what better could the world have done for her? And now she had thrown all that aside because she would not endure that Lady ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... warm man in the City circles. His only child was Kate, a girl of seventeen. There were no other near relatives, save Dr. Dimsdale, a prosperous West-end physician. No wonder that Ezra Girdlestone's active business mind, and perhaps that of his father too, should speculate as to the disposal of the fortune ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... never good times in England since the poor began to speculate upon their condition. Formerly, they jogged on with as little reflection as horses: the whistling ploughman went cheek by jowl with his brother that neighed. Now the biped carries a box of phosphorus in his leather-breeches; and in the ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... muscle in an effort to breathe naturally, like one asleep, the boy counted the seconds while he waited for the clutch of a savage hand. And as the moment passed and the attack did not come he tried to speculate on what the strangers were doing. A guttural half exclamation soon allowed him a quick breath of temporary relief. The Indians were only after ...
— The Air Ship Boys • H.L. Sayler
... sup in comfort, or sleep in peace, or to do anything but plan and speculate. Never till this night had we talked with absolute mutual confidence, for Davies broke down the last barriers of reserve and let me see his whole mind. He loved this girl and he loved his country, two simple passions which for the time absorbed his ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... otherwise their condition in the world beyond, their ideas as to the other life continued to remain vague, and never approached the minute precision of the Egyptian conception. The cares of the present life were too absorbing to allow them leisure to speculate upon the conditions ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 3 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... it as a matter of course that he should speculate and gamble at cards, and indeed do anything and everything he fancied, but they beg him at least to keep to respectable clubs. He is constantly away. His daughter tries to tempt him home with the bloom of her hyacinths. 'How they long to see him again!' she says, 'how greatly have they been disappointed, ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... wrong, because I don't speculate," he returned. "I'm not a gambler—except on certainties. I guess I disappointed a friend of yours the other day because I wouldn't back him on ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington
... land is one of black and white, mostly black, without many of those really dangerous half-lights and shadows in which too many of our present day playwrights virtuously invite us to skulk and peer and speculate. ...
— Amphitryo, Asinaria, Aulularia, Bacchides, Captivi • Plautus Titus Maccius
... on a rock in a pasture on the top of some bare hill at midnight, and speculate on the height of the starry canopy. The stars are the jewels of the night, and perchance surpass anything which day has to show. A companion with whom I was sailing, one very windy, but bright moonlight night, when the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... negative. And Fenwick looked up quickly, and uttered a little sharp "Ah!" as though something had struck him. The slow head-shake said as plain as words could have said it, "I wish I could say yes." So expressive was it that Fenwick did not even speculate on the third alternative—a separation without a divorce. He saw at once he could make it easier for her if he spoke out plain, treating the bygone as a thing that ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... speculate over that question for a while, my fine fellow. In the meantime, I fancy it will be a good idea to tie you up so you will not make any trouble. Remember I have a revolver handy, and I promise that I'll use it if ...
— Frank Merriwell Down South • Burt L. Standish
... a place of such luxury. The main dining-room, to the boy's mind, was an object of special interest. He would purposely sneak up-stairs and sit on one of the soft sofas in the foyer simply to see the well-dressed diners go in and come out. Edward would speculate on whether the time would ever come when he could dine in that wonderful ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok (1863-1930)
... side. Ventilators were quickly brought to their places, and later even the hatches were battened down. The dust became suffocating, and the men at times had all they could do to keep from choking. What the stuff was we could not at first conjecture, or rather, we didn't have much time to speculate on it, for we had to get our ship in shape to ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various
... was Alice who said, "Shut up, Pop"—and rather casually at that—and she and me went on to speculate and then to argue about which buttons we ought to push, if ...
— The Night of the Long Knives • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... his crucibles had burst except one, which Kellerman said contained the "Blacker than Black." One of his assistants, however, protested that no gold had ever been found; and so, even persevering old Kellerman, the last of his race, who dared to speculate with the iron horse just behind him, disappears from the scene, discredited by the Phillistines, ...
— Fragments of Two Centuries - Glimpses of Country Life when George III. was King • Alfred Kingston
... is astride of his hobby, the case is hopeless. To cast a doubt upon even the least of his declarations touching the doings of the Roman General is the signal for a blaze of arguments down all his battle front; and I really do not like even to speculate upon what might happen were I to meet one of his major propositions with a flat denial! But an attack in flank, I find—the sudden posing of a question upon some minor antiquarian theme—usually can be counted upon, as in this instance, to draw him outside the Roman lines. ...
— The Christmas Kalends of Provence - And Some Other Provencal Festivals • Thomas A. Janvier
... a fancy to speculate how, supposing the matter still undecided, I would like to spend my life. Often I feel how good it would be to give it in service to one of my six dear friends: just to offer it to them as so much capital, for whatever it may be worth. ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne
... last remark," he said. "My opinion is your views are sound. It is very rash to speculate on shares you don't ...
— The Buccaneer Farmer - Published In England Under The Title "Askew's Victory" • Harold Bindloss
... for dollar—always—sometimes more. My people are popularly known as Shylocks. But you note that my rate of usury is small, the time long, and that I want these settlers to stay. I am not trying to get rid of them in order to speculate on their land in coming days of prosperity—the days when you will be landlords over broad acres and I a merchant prince. I say again, I believe in the West and in you farmer people who must turn the West from a wilderness to ...
— Winning the Wilderness • Margaret Hill McCarter
... that he feared it would be so, although he could not yet speak with any degree of certainty; and getting away as soon as he could, went home to con Newman's letter once more, and speculate upon ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... I am philosopher enough to be happy,—I meant to say not particularly unhappy,—in solitude; but man is an animal made for society. I was gifted with reason, not to speculate in Aspenden Park, but to interchange ideas with some person who can understand me. This is what I miss at Aspenden. There are several here who possess both taste and reading; who can criticise Lord Byron and Southey with much tact and "savoir du metier." ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... cabinet itself—receives him;"—and Ichabod grew more than ever pleased and satisfied with the idea, when he reflected that Jared had all along been held to possess a goodly person, and a very fair development of the parts of speech. He even ventured to speculate upon the possibility of Jared passing into the White House—the dawn of that era having already arrived, which left nobody safe from the crowning ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... to speculate on who would open the doors on this particular morning. Maybe it would be the master, Steve Earle, maybe the mistress, Marian Earle, maybe the boy Tommy—maybe old Aunt Cindy the cook. If it were the old black woman she would grumble. She would declare she didn't have time to bother with ...
— Frank of Freedom Hill • Samuel A. Derieux
... attempt to speculate on the original creation of the universe. Their speculations, however, are concerned with what is called Avantara srishti or that creation which springs forth with the awakening of Brahman. Creation and Destruction have occurred ceaselessly and will occur ceaselessly. The ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... on my return. He always, morning, noon, and night, had one either in his hand or projecting out of his mouth. It signified not what was his occupation, the little stiletto was always to the fore. We used to speculate on board if he so slept, and the ...
— The Truth About America • Edward Money
... to speculate any longer upon them. He resolved to wake Guapo; but in doing so the whole party were aroused, and started to their feet in some alarm and confusion. The noise and movement had its effect on the nocturnal visitors; for before Leon could explain himself, those immediately around the fires and for ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... Monstrous incongruity. Philosophy and fighting troopers. The Infinite and dead horses. There's humour for you. The Sublime takes off its hat to the Ridiculous. Send a cartridge clashing into the breech and speculate about the Absolute. Keep one eye on your sights and the other on Cosmos. Blow the reek of burned powder from before you so you may look over the edge of the abyss of the Great Primal Cause. Duck to the whistle of a bullet and commune with Schopenhauer. Perhaps I am a little mad. Perhaps I am supremely ...
— A Deal in Wheat - And Other Stories of the New and Old West • Frank Norris
... most natural, and simplest means by which a living being can utter itself is gesture—action. It is not necessary to speculate on prehistoric conditions. We need only observe the world around us, the behaviour of our friends and acquaintances, particularly those of South-European blood, to recognize how direct and eloquent is the expression of gesture. On the stage a simple series of dramatic actions ...
— Wagner's Tristan und Isolde • George Ainslie Hight
... why his brethren passed him over, and left him there all these years in Caesarea, whilst there was so much going on that was the continuation and development of the very movement that he had begun. We do not know why, and it is useless to try to speculate, but we may ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... a naval officer myself, I have gathered from the traditions of the service that it has been fully two hundred years since smoke or sail has been sighted east of 30d or west of 175d. The fate of the relinquished provinces which lay beyond the dead lines we could only speculate upon. That they were taken by the military power, which rose so suddenly in China after the fall of the republic, and which wrested Manchuria and Korea from Russia and Japan, and also absorbed the Philippines, is quite within the range ...
— The Lost Continent • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... had seen Frank over the mat which lay outside his study door, and that there was a six foot servitor to open any other door through which he might have to pass, he returned to his seat, and, drawing his chair close to the fire, began to speculate on ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... settlements must have some faults about them. There must be some inadequacy in their very nature to the purpose to which they were designed. We can only speculate as to where that fault, that inadequacy, is, but we may ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... carrying her milk-pail well-poised upon her head, began to speculate on its value. She would sell the milk and buy eggs; she would set the eggs and rear chickens; the chickens she would sell and buy a pig; this she would fatten and change for a cow and calf, and would it not be delightful to see the little calf skip and play? So ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... did not agree with her by any means; it made her hot with annoyance to realise that anybody could so think of James. At the same time she felt that she must steady herself. After all, a man might kiss his wife if he pleased, and he might do it how he pleased. It was undignified to speculate about it. She tried very hard to drive that home to herself, and she did succeed in imposing it upon her conduct. But she was not convinced. She was too deeply romantic for conviction by any such specious reasoning. That affair in the dark had been the real thing; it implied—oh, ...
— Love and Lucy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... consider what that work was, how varied and how wonderful, it seems idle—nay, it seems ungrateful and ungracious—to speculate too curiously on what further or other benefits this great intellect might have conferred upon mankind, had its possessor been endowed with those qualities of resolution and independence which he lacked. That Coleridge so often only shows the way, and so seldom ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... to look at everything as resulting from designed laws, with the details, whether good or bad, left to the working out of what we may call chance. Not that this notion AT ALL satisfies me. I feel most deeply that the whole subject is too profound for the human intellect. A dog might as well speculate on the mind of Newton. Let each man hope and believe what he can. Certainly I agree with you that my views are not at all necessarily atheistical. The lightning kills a man, whether a good one or bad one, owing to the excessively complex action of natural laws. A child (who may turn out an ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... anything was discovered, but again it was impossible, for there were calls upon me which I had not expected. If I had been short in my accounts I should have lost my situation, and it was a handsome one for a man of my age. You won't understand the details, but I began to speculate, to put off the evil hour, always hoping for a coup which would put everything right; but it never came. I was not helped, you see! Things went from bad to worse, until I could go on no longer. Then in despair I confessed the whole story to ...
— Betty Trevor • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... telegraph was truly epoch-making. It came at a time when steam navigation on land and water was yet in its infancy, and it is idle to speculate on the slow progress which this would have made had it not been for the assistance ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse
... appreciation. "I'm going to ask a favour of you," he said. "I want to leave the general run of my investments and interests here in your hands, to keep track of I don't want to speculate at all, in the ordinary meaning of the word. Even after I bury a pot of money in non-productive real estate, I shall have an income of 50,000 pounds at the very least, and perhaps twice as much. There's no fun in gambling when you've got such a bank as that behind you. But if ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... with exemplary fortitude; and I was lately edified by the magnanimous unconcern with which a married friend of mine sang the last verse of "Home! sweet home!" as the chaise which was to convey him from the burthen of his song drove up to the door. It does not become a bachelor to speculate on the mysteries of matrimonial philosophy; but the feeling of pain with which I enter on the task of migration has no affinity with individual sympathies, or even with domiciliary attachments. My landlady is, without exception, the ugliest woman in London; and the locality of Elbow-lane cannot ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 10, Issue 273, September 15, 1827 • Various
... has little contact with life and its interests, so strong is the social spirit that the preaching can be left out of account. What could be accomplished were the preaching as consciously directed to forwarding the social interests of the community one can only speculate."[19] ...
— The Evolution of the Country Community - A Study in Religious Sociology • Warren H. Wilson
... instructed me in the entanglements of Right and Wrong. Again it was you appeared in the meadows clad in a golden cope, like an Ambrose or an Augustine. Then I knew not the curse of thought; but you set me thinking. You put pride like a coal of fire on my lips; and I learned to speculate. But as yet, in the untrained freshness of my wit and raw youthfulness of mind, I felt no doubt. But again you came to me, and gave me uncertainty to feed on and doubt to drink like wine. So comes it, that this day I taste through you the entrancing illusion ...
— The Well of Saint Clare • Anatole France
... into close, daily contact with the ruling power, a contact from which there was no escape, in which instinctive likes and antipathies might make or mar a career. At this thought the young man began to speculate with some intensity upon the personality indicated thus far to his mind only by the ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... his home quite an hour after the time when the deed must have been done, and these women were discussing that point, one of them saying: "I don't believe my boy would ha' come 'ome that Sunday night if he'd ha' done it." It was surprising to me to hear a respectable mother speculate as to how her own son would behave in such a case, or contemplate even the possibility of his being guilty of murder; and I thought it all too practical a way of considering the subject. But it revealed how appallingly real such things may be to people who, as I tried to show ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... have the command of the story, and the artist was to illustrate him. How far these altered relations would have worked quite smoothly if Seymour had lived, and if Dickens' story had not so soon assumed the proportions of a colossal success, it is idle to speculate. Seymour died by his own hand before the second number was published, and so ceased to be in a position to assert himself. It was, however, in deference to the peculiar bent of his art that Mr. Winkle, with his disastrous sporting proclivities, ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials
... with the vice or the vagabondage which it suggests. And so it is that Slang words have a life as closely packed with adventure as is the life of those who use them with the quickest understanding. To ask what becomes of last year's Slang is as rash as to speculate on the fate of last year's literature. Many specimens die in the gutter, where they were born, after living a precarious life in the mouths of men. Others are gathered into dictionaries, and survive to become the sport of ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley
... get at her, was a novel species of flattery. She recognized the ring of a distinctly new note in his voice; but, strangely enough, the note lost its unfamiliarity in an instant. Margaret recognized that fact also, and as she swiftly speculate don the phenomenon her pulse went one ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... idle to speculate whether the "nephesh" of the animals, or the "living self" of the man, is an entity separate from the body, and capable of existing per se—of its own inherent nature—apart from it. We do not ...
— Creation and Its Records • B.H. Baden-Powell
... wild jungle creatures? Did they, in those days, cast aside their bark loin clothes, and revel once more in pristine nakedness, and in the green things of the forest, on all occasions of rejoicing? We can only speculate, and none can tell us whether we guess aright. But year after year, in a hundred camps throughout the broad Sakai country, the same ceremony is performed, and the same ancient chant goes up through the still night ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... noon, the usual hour of dinner, yet no preparations seemed made for the Queen's entertainment. Mary herself had retired into her own apartment, where she was closely engaged in writing. Her attendants were together in the presence-chamber, and much disposed to speculate on the delay of the dinner; for it may be recollected that their breakfast had been interrupted. "I believe in my conscience," said the page, "that having found the poisoning scheme miscarry, by having gone to the wrong merchant for their deadly wares, they are now about to ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... empty, and Jimmie Dale chose a seat by himself. How did she know? How did she know not only this, but the hundred other affairs that she had outlined in those letters of hers? By what means, superhuman, indeed, it seemed, did she—Jimmie Dale jerked himself erect suddenly. What good did it do to speculate on that now, when every minute was priceless? What was HE to do, how was he to act, what plan could he formulate and carry out, and WIN against odds that, at the outset, were desperate enough even to forecast ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... came as a shock to Ethne. She did not guess the correct answer; she was not, indeed, sufficiently mistress of herself to speculate upon any answer, but she dreaded it, whatever ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason
... again disappointed; the news of victories gained by the French over the Austrians seemed to occupy every attention, and threw a dark shade over all expectation of present liberty. I learned, however, and a prisoner's mind would not fail to speculate thereon, that my detention was well known in Paris, and thought to be hard; but it was also said, that I was considered in the same light as those persons who were arrested in France, as hostages for ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis Volume 2 • Matthew Flinders
... is a dynamic force within you. It pervades your whole being. It is an unseen but a very telling strength. It directs you, and it sends you on your errand of life. You cannot rest satisfied merely to know your ideal and to speculate about it. It is the engine of warfare in your career. Study ideals, not to contemplate and analyze, but to emulate them and to fill yourself with them. You have work to do. And work is more insistent than philosophy. You have work to do which no one else ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... and muffle your head in the clothes, shivering all the while, but less from bodily chill than the bare idea of a polar atmosphere. It is too cold even for the thoughts to venture abroad. You speculate on the luxury of wearing out a whole existence in bed, like an oyster in its shell, content with the sluggish ecstasy of inaction, and drowsily conscious of nothing but delicious warmth, such as you now feel again. Ah! that ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... into the basement and were passed in by the grille-keeper, whose manner betrayed a discreet consciousness of something in the air. It was unnecessary to speculate why. In the distance, muffled by the armoured passages, an authoritative voice boomed like a ...
— Four Max Carrados Detective Stories • Ernest Bramah
... a door, a latch clicked as the door was opened, a hollow jarring sound followed as the door was sharply closed. Stella went back into the room. The letter had been delivered; at this moment Henry Thresk was reading it; and with a sinking heart she began to speculate in what spirit he would receive its message. Henry Thresk! The unhappy woman bestirred herself to remember him. He had grown dim to her of late. How much did she know of him? she asked herself. Once years ago there had been a ...
— Witness For The Defense • A.E.W. Mason
... inconstancy, and flitting from Kennedy's Red Discovery to Kennedy's White, and from Hood's Sarsaparilla to Mother Seigel's Syrup. And there were, besides, some mildewed and half-empty bottles, the labels obliterated, over which Nares would sometimes sniff and speculate. "Seems to smell like diarrhoea stuff," he would remark. "I wish't I knew, and I would try it." But the slop-chest was indeed represented by the plugs of niggerhead and nothing else. Thus paternal laws are made, thus they are evaded; ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Bacon came by his death gives a good idea of how he tried to make use of his philosophy. He was not content with thinking and speculating, that is, looking at ideas. Speculate comes from the Latin speculari, to spy out. He wanted to experiment too. And although in those days no one had thought about it, we now know that Bacon was quite right and that meat can be kept by freezing it. And it is pleasant to know that before Bacon died he was able to write ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... not see any of an antique make. The men seemed to be contented with rings—huge, heavy rings of solid gold, worked with a rough flower pattern. One young fellow had three upon his fingers. This circumstance led me to speculate whether a certain portion at least of this display of jewellery around me had not been borrowed for ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... two miles from us, but we were most mercilessly jolted over a plank-road, where many of the planks had made a descent into a sea of mud, on the depth of which I did not attempt to speculate. Even in beautiful England I never saw a prettier sight than the assembling of the congregation. The church is built upon a very steep little knoll, the base of which is nearly encircled by a river. Close ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... object for them to buy. I got out with a net profit of seventy-four hundred and fifty dollars on the two schooners. Not so bad, eh, Mr. Ricks? Over nine thousand dollars in less than three months? Of course, I realize I could not have made that much if I hadn't had the funds with which to speculate." ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne
... prophetic. Clarinda turned out a remarkable woman. She married an eminent dissenting minister, and became the mother of Dr. John Aiken and Mrs. Barbauld, and in her granddaughter, Lucy Aiken, her matrimonial name still survives; so that the curious in such matters may speculate how far the instructions of Doddridge contributed to produce the "Universal Biography," "Evenings at Home," and "Memoirs of the ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... don't let us plunge from philology into ethnology. I prefer to speculate upon Mr. Thomas Burroughs. Who is he? and what does ...
— Outpost • J.G. Austin
... rafts which they moor to the bank. It is a busy scene; the wreckers, men, women, and children alike, are so engaged in their grab-bag game that they have no eyes for us; unobserved, we watch them at close range, and speculate ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites
... gentleman the lady's watch for the gentleman's horse." If lady's and gentleman's are nouns, her and his must be personal pronouns. The same remarks apply to my, thy, our, your, their and its. This view of these words may be objected to by those who speculate and refine upon the principles of grammar until they prove their non-existence, but it is believed, nevertheless, to be based on sound reason and ...
— English Grammar in Familiar Lectures • Samuel Kirkham
... Asclepiades of Prusa (who lived in Rome in the first century before Christ), and by his pupil Themison (B.C. 50). The third school of medical thought, that of Empiricism, taught that experience was the only teacher, and that it was idle to speculate upon remote causes. The Empirics based these views upon the teaching of philosophers known as Sceptics or Zetetics, followers of Parmenides and Pyrrho, who taught that it was useless to fatigue the mind in endeavouring ...
— Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine • James Sands Elliott
... moved so softly that he might not lose the echoes of this cry. The two men seemed alone in the silent scene. Once Tatsu thought his eye caught a swift flicker, as of a gray sleeve, but he was not sure. At any rate he would not think of it, or speculate, or marvel! He was beginning to tremble before the unknown. The sense of shrinking, of miracle, of being, perhaps, too small to contain the thing decreed, bore hard upon him. With it came a keen impression of the unreality ...
— The Dragon Painter • Mary McNeil Fenollosa
... any action Ferguson must be convinced of the guilt of the man he was hunting, and nothing had yet occurred that would lead him to suspect Radford. He did not speculate on what course he would take should circumstances prove Radford to be the thief. Would the fact that he was Mary Radford's brother affect his decision? He preferred to answer that question when the time came—if it ever came. One thing was certain; he was not shooting anyone unless ...
— The Two-Gun Man • Charles Alden Seltzer
... did much to sharpen reason and to develop the mind, but they failed for want of data. Indeed, this has been the common failure of man, for in the height of civilization men speculate without sufficient knowledge. Even in the beginning of scientific thought, for lack of facts, men spent much of their time in speculation. The scholastic philosophers were led to consider many unimportant questions which could not be well settled. They asked the church authorities why the ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... plans and intentions; or too dishonest to acknowledge either. But without pretending to any prophetic sagacity, we can certainly predict to that society the ultimate triumph of their hopes and labours; and disappointment and defeat to all who oppose them. Men may theorize and speculate about their plans in America. But there can be no speculation here. The cheerful abodes of civilization and happiness, which are scattered over this verdant mountain; the flourishing settlements which are spreading around it—the sound of Christian instruction, and scene of ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various
... her feet in a moment. She appeared glad to have some excuse for action. She was, no doubt, nervous and excited as to the probable result of her lover's mission to the Hall, and wanted to be alone with Anne in order that they might speculate upon those probabilities which Banks's return would ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford
... entered the port of Joppa they observed another English yacht in those waters; but, before they could speculate on its owner, they were involved in all the complications of landing. On the quay, the Russian vice-consul was in attendance with horses and mules, and donkeys handsomer than either. The ladies were ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... philosophical; it is a dodging of the question, instead of an attempt to solve it. Divine ordination—"[Greek: Doz d' etelevto Bonlae]"—is a maxim which settles all difficulties. But it also precludes all inquiry. Why speculate at all, with ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... divined, not even she who, from her cradle, has been my destined bride. In this lies the secret of my political enthusiasm. Spain has taken the place of a mistress and received the homage of my heart. And now Spain, too, is gone! Beggared of all, I can gaze upon the ruin of what once was me and speculate over the mysteries of ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... Perhaps I should have spoken when I first surprised the secret, but it's all so past that it's useless to speculate now. It was fate, I suppose. I was very young, you were very unapproachable, and—and we had no love to make the way easy." For a second her glance faltered and she looked away. "A woman's—a girl's—disillusioning is a very sad comedy—it should never have an audience." She laughed a ...
— The Masquerader • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... the sun. He is at home everywhere. When he dies they won't be able to get any grave to hold him. They will have to bury him under a pyramid." In our reckoning such a man hardly counts. It would be most interesting, if it were as yet possible, to speculate as to whether his permanent influence has been more on the side of a kind of a wild Titanic paganism, or of that ancient Calvinistic God whom Macandrew worships in the temple ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... episode T. began to speculate about sexual matters and to observe the coupling of dogs with newly acquired interest. At 10 years he often lay awake, listening to a woman of 25 singing to a piano accompaniment. The woman's voice seemed very beautiful, and so strongly impressed ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... disturbing the ashes. Perhaps, he felt it all the more keenly on account of those expressions which recalled his own youth. He understood how irresistible must have been the strength of such a love and he trembled to speculate ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... time, we sat down to our solitary wedding breakfast; and there were no eyes to speculate upon the bride's beauty, to note her changing color, or the glory of her eyes; and no healths were proposed or toasts drunk, nor any speeches spoken—except, perhaps by my good friend—the brook outside, who, of course, understood the situation, and babbled tolerantly of us to the listening ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... steamers are usually filled with an interesting lot of passengers. At first you may only speculate as to who and what they are and whither they are bound, but as the days go by you get acquainted with many of them and find out who nearly everybody is and all about him. On this steamer there were several interesting people. First in station and importance ...
— In Africa - Hunting Adventures in the Big Game Country • John T. McCutcheon
... be insisted on for her,' said Miss Headworth. 'It is no use, however, to speculate on the future. We cannot guess how Mr. Mark Egremont's communication will be received, or whether any wish will be expressed for your mother's rejoining your father. In such a case the terms must ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Isidore of Seville. Then again, there is a danger, I think, analogous to the danger met with in early botany—the danger of confusing a resemblance with a relationship. It is extremely interesting to speculate that the Place de l'Etoile is an evolution from the plan of the game-forest, with its shooting avenues radiating from a centre, but it would be difficult to show that there is any historical connection. The thing ...
— Civics: as Applied Sociology • Patrick Geddes
... reached up tall enough. He had no love in his heart, nor mirth. My cousin has always loved a horse and even in his childhood this love was strong. And so, during the days that led up to Christmas when children speculate upon their desires and check them on their fingers, he kept asking his uncle for a pony. At first, as you might know, his uncle was stolid against the thought, but finally, with many winks and nods—pleasantries beyond ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks
... dogs of Caneville were little disposed to speculate that day, or I was very awkward in my occupation, but no one seemed willing to make a trial of my "fire-flies." In vain I used the most enticing words to set off my goods, even going so far as to say that cigars lighted ...
— The Adventures of a Dog, and a Good Dog Too • Alfred Elwes
... in forecasting what was going to happen downtown. I used to say to myself that if I had capital it would be easy to make money breed money. Well, one day I borrowed from the bank, without the bank's leave, $3,000 in order to speculate. I won on that deal and the next and the next. Then I was able to return what I'd borrowed and to set up in a small way for myself in the furniture business. That was my start, ladies—the ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... allow money-making—even for those he is to leave behind—to be combined with his pursuit, it loses its fresh relish, its exhilarating influence, and becomes the source of wretched cares and paltry anxieties. Where money is the object, let a man speculate or become a miser—a very enviable condition to him who has the saving grace to achieve it, if we hold with Byron that the accumulation of money is the only ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... her word. Young Hugh was an athletic, well proportioned, handsome man; of a sanguine temper, prone to pleasure, a frequenter of wakes and fairs, and much addicted to speculate; particularly in ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... to understand why Bruno's prosecution occupied the Holy Office through this space of time. But conjectures on the subject are now useless. Equally futile is it to speculate whether Bruno offered to conform in life and doctrine to the Church at Rome as he had done at Venice. The temptation to do so must have been great. Most probably he begged for grace, but grace was not accorded on his own terms; and he chose death ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... a stranger—to decoy him into a speculation that promised to bring him fifty per cent. He invested in the traffic of usury what had sufficed to save a hundred such as I am from perdition, and he lost it all. It was nearly his whole fortune; but he lives and has his luxuries still: he cannot speculate, but he can save: he cared not if I starved, for he finds an hourly happiness ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... talk so; but men are different. If there is a veil before us, we must tear it away,—not sit muffled in its folds, and speculate on what ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various
... me, in 1837, that something might be made out on this question by patiently accumulating and reflecting upon all sorts of facts which could possibly have any bearing on it. After five years' work I allowed myself to speculate on the subject, and drew up some short notes; these I enlarged in 1844 into a sketch of the conclusions which then seemed to me probable: from that period to the present day I have steadily pursued the same object. I hope that I may be excused for entering on these personal details, as I give ...
— Unconscious Memory • Samuel Butler
... weighed down by such intense misery, or covered with filthier rags, though she was fatter than ever, and wore a stupid look. In the foulest weather, despite hard frosts or drenching rain, the old woman now followed funerals in order to speculate on the pity of the charitable. She well knew that amongst the gravestones the fear of death makes people generous; and so she prowled from tomb to tomb, approaching the kneeling mourners at the moment they burst into tears, for she understood that they were then powerless to refuse ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... of the last eight years, during which the system has been in force, may be taken as a reliable guide, the experiment shows many signs of success. It has certainly checked the tendency to speculate in lands with a view to a rise in price, which threatened to become a great, as it certainly was a growing, evil. It has been found that it will not pay to do this in the face of taxation, and particularly of the graduated tax; and owners of large areas ...
— The Arena - Volume 18, No. 92, July, 1897 • Various
... so, for, in spite of all their scout courage, the girls were not especially anxious to run headlong into the arms of two foreigners, who would undoubtedly be angry. The prospect of meeting a benevolent old grandfather was much more comfortable to speculate upon. ...
— The Girl Scouts at Bellaire - Or Maid Mary's Awakening • Lilian C. McNamara Garis
... When you speculate on margins you are like the fellow holding on a bear's tail as it runs around a tree—if you lose your hold the ...
— Dollars and Sense • Col. Wm. C. Hunter
... worst of being in society is that you are forced to know so many disreputable people); when they come to our house—and they do come in shoals, Angelica being the attraction, you know—then we speculate. Angelica feels quite sure that the Duke of Morningquest himself is your father. He was a loose old fish, they say. And there is a sort of family likeness between you. Angelica thinks you came here that your presence might be a ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... the present chronicler nor Mistress Plodgitt got any further information from the prudent Carmen, and must fain speculate upon certain facts ...
— The Story of a Mine • Bret Harte
... Jackson was accessible. But he was not communicative, and up to Inauguration Day people were left to speculate not only upon the truth of the rumor that there was to be a "full sweep" in the offices but upon the new Administration's attitude on public questions in general. Even Isaac Hill, a warm friend and supporter, was obliged to write to an acquaintance ...
— The Reign of Andrew Jackson • Frederic Austin Ogg
... understanding, may be inspired with a longing to inquire more deeply into this interesting subject. They may be stimulated to investigate, in a philosophical spirit, all the marvellous facts and phenomena connected with volcanic agency, and to speculate on their causes and modes of operation. Some also, on reaching their manhood, may be induced to ascend one or more of the nearer active volcanoes, and examine their phenomena for themselves. The facilities of travel are ...
— Wonders of Creation • Anonymous
... Paul. There was no doubt in Paul's mind as to the quality of his patron. He had at once recognized the Greatest Pitcher. He ceased to speculate as to whether this assured young man owned the high office-building. That was ...
— Bunker Bean • Harry Leon Wilson
... seamen had free access to the shore. Under similar circumstances nowadays, if the fruit happened not to be ready, the ship would have been off, after ten days' relaxation, to survey other islands, or speculate on coral reefs, or make astronomical observations; in short, to do something or other to keep the devil out of the heads of the crew.'[8] Bligh would appear to have been sensible of this on his next expedition in the Providence, ...
— The Eventful History Of The Mutiny And Piratical Seizure - Of H.M.S. Bounty: Its Cause And Consequences • Sir John Barrow
... speculate on the economic effect which the space program is having on investments or on investors who have no other connection with it. It seems significant, however, that the stock market pages in recent months have come to devote a good deal of attention to "space ...
— The Practical Values of Space Exploration • Committee on Science and Astronautics
... good it would at least strike somewhere in the midst of the debris and add more or less to the wreckage. As to whether the Boche commander-in-chief had been caught napping and buried in the ruins, was a matter about which they could only speculate. ...
— Air Service Boys Flying for Victory - or, Bombing the Last German Stronghold • Charles Amory Beach
... had been increasing for five or six years, therefore it is impossible to ascertain or even to speculate upon the distance to which it might extend. The slave-traders had been obliged to seek another rout, which they had found via the Bahr Giraffe, which river had proved to be merely a branch of the White Nile, as I had suggested in my former work, and ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... the mill we could see other objects of deep interest. These were, the vessels from St. Michael's, on their way to Baltimore. It was a source of much amusement to view the flowing sails and complicated rigging, as the little crafts dashed by, and to speculate upon Baltimore, as to the kind and quality of the place. With so many sources of interest around me, the reader may be prepared to learn that I began to think very highly of Col. L.'s plantation. It was just a place to my boyish taste. There were fish ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... General Tithing Office. We have documents to show that Bishops have taken in hundreds of bushels of wheat, and only a small portion of it has come into the General Tithing Office. They stole it to let their friends speculate upon."* ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... responsibility, where I could have rallied my enfeebled health. Besides, I had a doubt whether I ought to be put on a District so soon again, after having completed two full terms before I reached my fortieth year. But it is vain to speculate in advance. At the close of the Conference, I found myself appointed Presiding Elder ...
— Thirty Years in the Itinerancy • Wesson Gage Miller
... only speculate, of course, on such an occasion, but perhaps no trial is recorded as having taken place, with the results of which every body, the parties convicted only excepted, was, in all probability, better pleased ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts
... tenants could be found, the house was eventually pulled down, and a row of fine modern buildings now occupy the site. As the history of the place could never be traced with any degree of authenticity, one can do no more than speculate as to the cause of the disturbances, which, I am inclined to think, were due to the phantoms of people and animals that had once actually lived ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell
... whose beaming face shone out from the midst of a bevy of particular friends, while ever and again above the turmoil, like a banner in the breeze, waved the tawny mane of Sir Digby Oakshott. It amused Railsford to watch the group, and when now and then they looked his way, to speculate on what was the subject of their conversation. Perhaps Arthur had been telling them of the new master's athletic achievements at Cambridge, and how he had rowed his boat to the head of the river; or possibly he had been describing to them some of the big football-matches ...
— The Master of the Shell • Talbot Baines Reed
... Gaston's brief visits from home, Joyce had gone to Drew, timing her call when she knew his womenkind were away. She had an instinctive aversion to her own sex. She had thought it was contempt for St. Ange womanhood; she did not speculate about these others. ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... head-master to the most prudent dealer, and the boys who lost their money time after time should be dismissed. Of course if any boy proved to have a genius for speculation and made money—well and good, let him speculate by ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... potentialities had wakened her imagination. If she had been a young woman she knew that she might have fallen tragically and hopelessly in love with him; as an old woman she found it well worth her while to watch him and speculate upon him. When he had become engaged to Agnes Stornaway, she had watched him and secretly wondered how the engagement would end; when it had ended in marriage she had not wondered, but she had seen many things other people did not see. "He is not in love with ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... and which came under the jurisdiction of Upham. In all these villages people were wont to run from the windows to the doors when they saw the doctor's sulky whirl past, peer after it, up or down the road, to see where it might stop, and speculate if this old soul were about to leave the world, or that new ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... And Sheil will abuse the Parliament, And Peel the Association; And the thought of bayonets and swords Will make ex-Chancellors merry— And jokes will be cut in the House of Lords, And throats in the County Kerry; And writers of weight will speculate On the Cabinet's design— And just what it did in Twenty-eight, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 351 - Volume 13, Saturday, January 10, 1829 • Various
... conifer seeds for each one she chooses for growth, so we can only speculate as to the selection of the seed from which sprung this storied pine. It may be that the cone in which it matured was crushed into the earth by the hoof of a passing deer. It may have been hidden by a jay; or, as ...
— Wild Life on the Rockies • Enos A. Mills
... commanded by the voice of Conscience, whose dictates I must not speculate about, but obey in silence—are they actually the means, and the only means, of accomplishing the earthly aim of mankind? That I cannot refer them to any other object but this, that I can have no other intent with ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... historical composition. The systems which professed to unfold the nature of God, of man, and of the universe, entertained the curiosity of the philosophic student; and according to the temper of his mind, he might doubt with the Sceptics, or decide with the Stoics, sublimely speculate with Plato, or severely argue with Aristotle. The pride of the adverse sects had fixed an unattainable term of moral happiness and perfection; but the race was glorious and salutary; the disciples of Zeno, and even those ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon |
