"Unphilosophical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... shall, with pleasure, take upon me to draw this amiable, quiet, deserving, unpretending, Christian, unphilosophical character in his epitaph. There truth may be spoken in a few words; as for flourish, and oratory, and poetry, I leave them to younger and more lively writers, such as love writing for writing sake, and would rather show their ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... concern, as friends of learning, is with those schools where children are first trained in the elements. If in these we can have faithful, accurate, systematic, comprehensive teaching, everything else desirable will be added thereunto. But, if we are negligent, unphilosophical, and false, the reasonable public expectation will never be realized in regard to ...
— Thoughts on Educational Topics and Institutions • George S. Boutwell
... thought to be a philosophical one. Almost the first idea of a child, or of a simple person looking at anything, is, that it is a red, or a black, or a green, or a white thing. Nay, say the artists; that is an unphilosophical and barbarous view of the matter. Red and white are mere vulgar appearances; look farther into the matter, and you will see such and such wonderful other appearances. Abstract those, they are the heroic, epic, historic, and ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... and those that I cared for most did their best to spoil mine for me. For people who believe in a hereafter, and choose to contemplate a doubtful future, adorned with flames and largely peopled with devils, I can imagine death to have its unpleasant side; but I look upon all such notions as unphilosophical in the extreme. And now, Monsieur, I think I could sleep a little. By-and-by, when Madelon awakes, I ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... images of the brain, I will undertake to shew how it may perceive the most distant objects; for if we give eyes to the mind, to perceive what is transacted at home in its dark chamber, why may we not make the eyes a little longer-sighted? And then we shall have no occasion for that unphilosophical fiction of images in the brain.' (Inq., VI, 12.) Reid proceeds to show this by pointing out, first, that we must only use the idea of 'image' for truly visual perceptions; secondly, that the sole place of this image is the background of the eye, and ...
— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs
... reference to 'drowned bodies' only, by citing some five or six instances in which the bodies of individuals known to be drowned were found floating after the lapse of less time than is insisted upon by L'Etoile. But there is something excessively unphilosophical in the attempt on the part of Le Moniteur, to rebut the general assertion of L'Etoile, by a citation of particular instances militating against that assertion. Had it been possible to adduce fifty instead of five examples of bodies ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... in the state of emerging from the sea, and those operations of subterranean fire fit for elevating land was then no doubt exerted with great energy; at present, no such thing appears in this place. But, from the momentary views we have of things, it would be most unphilosophical to draw ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 2 (of 4) • James Hutton
... instruments, and the mind is the form of forms." The remark of the great Athenian regarding the hand, while no truer than that one touching the mind, is yet easier of demonstration to the unphilosophical reader. For instance, the printers of the finest engravings to this day use the palm of the hand to apply the ink; the type-setting machine is so far a failure for the want of the human fingers; the most perfect performance of music on a machine yet lacks that sympathy and ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern
... the study, which have oppressed his brain. But though men are often, thank heaven, better than their doctrines, yet the goodness of the man does not make his doctrine good; and it is immoral as well as unphilosophical to call a thing hard names simply because it cannot be fitted into our theory of the universe. Immoral, because all harsh and hasty wholesale judgments are immoral; unphilosophical, because the only philosophical method of looking at the strangest of phaenomena is to ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... as he caught sight of his own figure in one of the long mirrors—his shabby, ill-fitting clothes looked so sadly out of place amidst all this magnificence—and for the first time in his life he felt ashamed of his poverty. Highly unphilosophical this, but surely excusable in so young a man as our hero. With a natural desire to improve his forlorn appearance if he could, he unpacked the scanty supply of clothing that his faithful Pierre had put up ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... been the subject of much blame for his real or supposed lenity towards the Spanish murderers and tyrants in America. That the sixteenth chapter of Mr. G. did not excite the same or greater disapprobation, is a proof of the unphilosophical and indeed fanatical animosity against Christianity, which was so prevalent during the latter part of the eighteenth century.—Mackintosh: see Life, i. ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... Now, the unscientific and unphilosophical taint, which marked the earliest heavenward cries of terrified man, has clung to the petitions which he offers up at this hour for material favours and blessings. At the close of a prolonged drought, ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan
... dear John!" said the surgeon, with convulsive sobs, "thy hour has come, and many a more prudent man survives thee; but none better, nor braver. O John, thou wert to me a kind friend, and very dear; it is unphilosophical to grieve; but for thee I must ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... broke in, "this self-culture in one's own study does no one any good. For that reason I do not mind if I appear unphilosophical. One has duties toward one's fellowmen. One must be useful to the State, as a good citizen. One must make money, to add to the ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... sphere of life, experiences external to oneself, messages from some hidden agency. When they correspond, as by coincidence they are almost bound on occasions to do, with some unforeseen and unexpected event that follows them, it is very difficult for unphilosophical minds not to believe that they are visions sent from some power that can foresee the future. It would be strange if dreams, trafficking as they do with such wide and various experiences, did not occasionally ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... of Him at all. In struggling to regard Him as a pure immaterial Spirit, we have made the word Spirit synonymous with nothing, and can only say that He is a Somewhat, with certain attributes, such as Power, Wisdom, and Intelligence. To compare Him to LIGHT, would now be deemed not only unphilosophical, but the equivalent of Atheism; and we find it necessary to excuse and pity the ancients for their inadequate and gross ideas of Deity, expressed in considering Him as the Light-Principle, the invisible essence or substance from which visible ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... which I have set down word for word; and of which I can only say, that its imagery is no more gross, its confusion between the objective and subjective no more unphilosophical, than the speech on similar matters of many whom we are taught to call ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... direction left in his will, that his heart should be buried beneath the sun-dial of his garden, at Moor Park, near Farnham, in Surrey. In accordance with which, it was deposited there in a silver box, affording another instance of the ruling passion unweakened even in death. Nor was this an unphilosophical clinging to that which it was impossible to retain; but rather that grateful feeling, common to our nature, of desiring finally to repose where in life we have been happy. In his garden, Sir William Temple had spent the calmest hours of a well-spent life, and where ...
— On the Portraits of English Authors on Gardening, • Samuel Felton |
