"Skeptical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... years, especially that gathered by the Society for Psychical Research, the makers of such explanations simply put themselves in the category of those who, in Schopenhauer's day, denied the telopsis which is now quite generally recognized. He said their attitude should not be called skeptical, but merely ignorant. This brings to mind an excellent very practical friend who read the first number of this REVIEW, and praised it, but said: "Don't fool any more with Psychical Research and Simplified Spelling." We refrained from saying that we had not known that he had ever studied ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... my first school, however, and people wondered. The supervisor also wondered, and was skeptical. Several of the parents, who did not understand very well, complained to him that I kept a menagerie instead of a school. There were some, even, who did not wish to have their children taught natural history, because ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... hear them say to each other in dog language, a strong, morose, savage badger! Alas! we are wasting our days in idleness, our talents rust from disuse! Finally, Uncle Jim remained the only frankly skeptical member. ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... He looked astonished, skeptical, then pained. It was during the days, I think, of my "probation," and into his anxious heart had come the thought, Was I "running well"? But he dismissed the doubt and promised to walk over ...
— Roof and Meadow • Dallas Lore Sharp
... dark when a motley throng of uncles, aunties, visiting lady, neighbors and children went climbing the cavernous, echoing stairway of the dark school building behind the toiling figure of the skeptical Uncle Michael, ...
— The Speaker, No. 5: Volume II, Issue 1 - December, 1906. • Various
... little. She was a pallid, tired woman with skeptical eyes. "Well, I'm sure that's very kind of her but I'm afraid it's no use. I've just come down from talking to her, nearly all her noon hour. She wouldn't go to the table. She's turned sullen, now. She won't take any interest in the Christmas preparations; ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... the gate of the Marvin mansion to the avenue, and as Harry turned to Pauline with a skeptical reply on his lips, the approach of a young man of military bearing ...
— The Perils of Pauline • Charles Goddard
... an imposing document covered with slanting lines of curving Arabic letters in gold. Peter was impressed but still skeptical. ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... due respect to your rank and ability, captain," Thorn said, "I have a feeling that you'd have been skeptical ...
— With No Strings Attached • Gordon Randall Garrett (AKA David Gordon)
... story from one who had no business to tell it to me, or to any other. I may credit the seductive influence of an old vintage upon the narrator for the beginning of it, and my own skeptical incredulity during the days that followed for the balance of the ...
— Tarzan of the Apes • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... character above all Greek, above all Roman fame. As a teacher of wisdom, he may be confidently followed. His religion has nothing in it enthusiastic or superstitious; he appears neither weakly credulous nor wantonly skeptical; his morality is neither dangerously lax nor impracticably rigid. All the enchantment of fancy, and all the cogency of argument, are employed to recommend to the reader his real interest—the care of pleasing the Author ...
— The Book of Religions • John Hayward
... as they told how they were led out of darkness into light, and asked for the prayers of all good Christians. The audience felt that human hearts are the same the world over, and that the Holy Ghost had been given unto them, "even as unto us." The address of Low Quong would convince the most skeptical of the power of the gospel to purify the heart, illumine the mind and elevate the life and character of the Chinamen as well as others. He spoke in good English, and by his clear putting of the gospel truth, touched ...
— American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 4, April, 1889 • Various
... Somewhat excited, yet half skeptical, he returned to the excavation and scooped out yet another collection. This time there could be no mistake. Nature's own alchemy had fashioned a veritable ingot. There were small lumps in the ore which would need alloy at the mint before they could be issued as ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... would justify it. She had made Dr. Welwright tell her all he knew about her, and his report of her grace and beauty had piqued her curiosity; his account of the forlorn dullness of her life with Mrs. Lander in their hotel had touched her heart. But she was still skeptical when she went to get her letter of introduction; when she brought Clementina home from the dressmaker's she asked if she might kiss her, and said she was already in ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... pretended to be skeptical; but at last permitted himself to be convinced that Mohammed Beyd had indeed killed himself in remorse for the death of the white woman he had, all unknown to ...
— Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... an exclamation of skeptical impatience, and the door below slammed with a bang. Laura quietly closed her door, through which Mrs. Farley's angry mutterings could still be heard indistinctly. Laura sighed, and, walking to the table, sat down again. Annie looked at her a moment, and then slowly ...
— The Easiest Way - A Story of Metropolitan Life • Eugene Walter and Arthur Hornblow
... The complete skeptic is skeptical about skepticism; and there is one day in the round of days, this one, when he may lay aside his glasses, faintly tinted blue, and put on instead, not the rose-colored specs of Dr. Pangloss, but a glass ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor
... is just before the day"; we have had the blackest night for almost three months, and I don't see the light yet. "Better days are coming—" I am getting skeptical, ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... a hundred miles, of floe-ice in a field almost unbroken! More than a thousand miles, by accurate computation! The courtesy of the Westerner—who, having told of seeing a flock of pigeons nine miles long, so dense as to darken the sun at noonday, and meeting objections from a skeptical Yankee, magnanimously offered, as a personal favor, to "take out a quarter of a mile from the thinnest part"—cannot be imitated here. I must still say more than a thousand miles,—and this, too, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... similarly skeptical of every kind of authority, and had no confidence whatever in the ability of the three university faculties. For example, since patriarchal conditions were her ideal, she questioned whether mankind derived any material advantages from ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... were able to cross-pollinate and one tree was especially productive. Miles Bolton recognized its value and began growing seedling trees and distributing them to his neighbors. Some of them were quite skeptical and even refused to take them as a gift and plant them. However, he got the village pretty well planted to Persian walnut trees, so that today there are 145 nice trees within the village, and two small orchards on ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 41st Annual Meeting • Various
... Bumsteadville. Above it hung a portrait of the Pope, from which the grand old Apostolic son of an infallible dogma looked knowingly down, as though with the contents of that cupboard he could get-up such a schema as would be palatable to the most skeptical Bishop in all the Oecumenical Council, and of which be might justly say: Whosoever dare think that he ever tasted a better schema, or ever dreamed in his deepest consciousness that a better could be made, let him be anathema maranatha! A most rakish looking wooden button, noiselessly stealthly ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 15, July 9, 1870 • Various
... stick that he bestrides perfectly identified with a horse? Was Sully's child, that showed its doll a series of engravings to choose from, completely deceived? It seems that we must rather admit an intermittence, an alteration between affirmation and negation. On the one hand, the skeptical attitude of those who laugh at it displeases the child, who is like a devout believer whose faith is being broken down. On the other hand, doubt must indeed arise in him from time to time, for without this, rectification could never occur—one belief opposes the other or drives it away. This second ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... was free to belong to any other than the heathen creeds, and no one had taken offence at his skeptical writings. When Euryale acted like the best of the Christian women, he could not take it amiss; and he would have scorned to blame her preference for the teaching of ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... that later, because for the moment that line was spoiled for him. He would bring him forward perhaps next day, or even a few days later, choosing an opportunity to cry out to us, 'You know I was more skeptical about Smerdyakov than you, you remember that yourselves, but now I am convinced. He killed him, he must have done!' And for the present he falls back upon a gloomy and irritable denial. Impatience and anger prompted him, however, to the most inept ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... "Sam's skeptical, though," retorted Stanley. "And, as for me, I've a mine right here in San Francisco." He spoke enthusiastically. "Moving sandhills into the bay. Making a new city front out of flooded bogs! That's realism. Romance. And what's better, fortune! ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... Miller's smile had ceased to be skeptical, it was strained. "And which servant imparted that information ...
— I Spy • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... in his mind. Of course he knew the common stories—about fascination. He had once been himself an eyewitness of the charming of a small bird by one of our common harmless serpents. Whether a human being could be reached by this subtile agency, he had been skeptical, notwithstanding the mysterious relation generally felt to exist between man and this creature, "cursed above all cattle and above every beast of the field,"—a relation which some interpret as the fruit of the curse, and others hold to be so instinctive that this animal ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... am still skeptical about a commercial nut industry in New York on the basis of our present varieties. After more than 20 years of variety testing in Ithaca only the Thomas black walnut has shown any real merit. All the other sorts that were propagated and recommended have shown ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Twenty-Fifth Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association
... doubt a character," admitted the skeptical Thad, as though he begrudged acknowledging even this much; "but I still believe him to be a fake. Keep right on telling me ...
— The Chums of Scranton High Out for the Pennant • Donald Ferguson
... astonishment I drew up to him to see what it could be in the way of an apple to command such a price and be in such evident demand. They were truly lovely apples to look at, but noticing that I was still skeptical as to their exceeding merits, Willis kindly gave me one—by way of removing all doubts. Truth to say, those doubts were ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... blur ahead of them detached itself from the surrounding darkness, until even skeptical Tom and Billy knew that what they saw was a body of men bearing ...
— Army Boys in the French Trenches • Homer Randall
... matter of fact, Beverly gave one glance at the fly-away figure, then clasping both arms around Apache's neck, buried her face in his mane and to all intents and purposes collapsed into a paroxysm of tears, to the entire dismay of Mr. Cushman, and the skeptical "sizing up" of the situation by Mr. Ford, more lately from the campus. It was Athol who promptly turned a few handsprings behind their backs and Archie who rolled over upon ...
— A Dixie School Girl • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... was skeptical. "I wish I could believe it. I feel as if I were playing with a rattlesnake. He's treacherous! I think we'd better ...
— The Merriweather Girls in Quest of Treasure • Lizette M. Edholm
... boat himself, and did build one, with his own hands—a boat fourteen feet long and constructed of rough pine timbers painted with coal-tar—in Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey. With this boat Lake demonstrated to a skeptical world for all time that he was neither a visionary nor a dreamer, but a ...
— Opportunities in Engineering • Charles M. Horton
... She kin do it!" ejaculated Squire Heath, who had watched the melting of his skeptical opinions ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... father may have thought otherwise, being of a skeptical turn on very many points, but his doubts did not break forth in active denial, and he was rather disaffected than rebellious, At one period, this gentleman had taken a part in active life at home, and possibly ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... attention—especially among men who, daily trained to the labors of the chase, might appear well acquainted with the sagacity of a horse—but there were certain circumstances which intruded themselves per force upon the most skeptical and phlegmatic; and it is said there were times when the animal caused the gaping crowd who stood around to recoil in horror from the deep and impressive meaning of his terrible stamp—times when the young Metzengerstein turned ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... trained to such credulity by their education and experience, by their theological doctrines, and by the law of the land in Old England, but still clothed upon with that righteousness which as it proved in the end made them skeptical as to certain alleged evidences of guilt, and swift to respond to the calls of reason and of mercy when the appeals were made to their calm judgment and second thought as to the ...
— The Witchcraft Delusion In Colonial Connecticut (1647-1697) • John M. Taylor
... possible; as I have proved." Seeing the skeptical look his companion assumed, he continued, "Electricity is the basis of every motive power we have; it is the base of every formation that we know." The professor ...
— Advanced Chemistry • Jack G. Huekels
... sector, and a diversified industrial base. Over the past decade, however, the country has suffered recurring economic problems of inflation, external debt, capital flight, and budget deficits. Growth in 2000 was a negative 0.8%, as both domestic and foreign investors remained skeptical of the government's ability to pay debts and maintain the peso's fixed exchange rate with the US dollar. The economic situation worsened in 2001 with the widening of spreads on Argentine bonds, massive withdrawals ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... hands folded in the eternal gray gloves, on his face an expression of bored tolerance, the expression of a man who, after half a century in the political arena of France, had little to learn either of men or of affairs, even from a Peace Conference. Skeptical in attitude, a cold listener, obviously impermeable to mere verbiage and affected by the logic of facts alone, he had a ruthless finger ready to poke into the interstices of a loosely-woven argument. Clemenceau spoke but rarely, in low ...
— Woodrow Wilson and the World War - A Chronicle of Our Own Times. • Charles Seymour
... attitude," said Krech, "was that of a polite but skeptical child listening to a bedtime story. I soon convinced him of its importance, though. He ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... think for one minute it was all easy sailing, for there were doubting Thomases, but it only took time and results to convert even the most skeptical ones. And here I must make a confession. It was much easier for my sister, unversed in any phase of canning, to master this new method than it was for me with my four years' training course and my five years of teaching canning ...
— Every Step in Canning • Grace Viall Gray
... transitory condition skepticism is logical insurrection; as a system it is anarchy; skeptical method would thus ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... never meet again in this world. His family interest secured him a valuable appointment in a distant part of the British dominions." Mrs Pompley was always rather cowed by the Digbies. She could not be skeptical as to this connection, for the Colonel's mother was certainly a Digby, and the Colonel impaled the Digby arms. En revanche, as the French say, for these marital connections, Mrs. Pompley had her own favorite affinity, which she specially selected ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... Greeley and Raymond; of our greatest poets and scholars, Whittier and Lowell and Emerson; and of our greatest President, the Martyr of Emancipation. So wonderful are those scenes named Gettysburg, Appomattox, and the room where the Emancipation Act was signed, that even the most skeptical have felt that the issues of liberty and life for millions of slaves justified the entrance of a Divine Figure upon the human battle-field. This Unseen Leader and Captain of the host had dipped His sword in heaven, and carried ...
— The Battle of Principles - A Study of the Heroism and Eloquence of the Anti-Slavery Conflict • Newell Dwight Hillis
... conviction to the most skeptical. That a Greek priest could read a lie, never once entered the heads of ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... repeated, "and I mean it. I've tried everything on the face of the earth to find an interest—but one—and Florence Baker represents that one. I hope against hope that I'll find what I'm searching for there, but I am skeptical. I have been disappointed too many times to expect happiness now. This is my last trump, old man, and I'm playing it deliberately and carefully. If it fails, Florence will probably return; but before God, I never will! I have thought it ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... everyone, even though the waiters especially looked ready to expire in pools of perspiration. At Monsieur Le Bon Chef's counter some sticky waiter had ordered a roast-beef sandwich. The heat had made him skeptical. "Call that beef?" The waiter next him glared at him with a chuckle. "An' must we then always lead in the cow for you to see?" A large Irishman breezed up to my Bon Chef. "Two beef a la modes. Make it snappy, chief. Party's in a hurry. Has to catch the ...
— Working With the Working Woman • Cornelia Stratton Parker
... woman was as cold as a steel buckler, and had married as soon as she left the convent in which she had been to school, without any affection or even liking for her husband, whom the most skeptical respected as a saint, and who had a look of virgin purity on her calm face as she went down the steps of the Madeleine ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... The Christian religion is full of the most blessed promises of salvation in everything," said Kate, gently, but flushing a little as she spoke, for she disliked talking religion with Grace, who was so skeptical, although if compelled to do so, it was a matter of duty to stand up for ...
— The Right Knock - A Story • Helen Van-Anderson
... bit skeptical at first, it all seemed so silly, such a whimsey for a rich man to fancy—taking such big risks just for the thrill he got—but the more I picked up about the man the less inclined I became to doubt, and by now I'm convinced it is ...
— Eagles of the Sky - With Jack Ralston Along the Air Lanes • Ambrose Newcomb
... skeptical. "Dream on, fair son!" he said. "It's lucky for us that you're only dreaming; because if people go to moving that far, real estate values in the old residence part of town are going to be stretched ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... owners if they might spray their trees. After three years, however, the owners appealed to Prof. Updegraff to have their trees sprayed. This year he had more work than he could manage. Demonstrations of this kind show the value of the work so vividly that the most skeptical gradually ...
— Trees, Fruits and Flowers of Minnesota, 1916 • Various
... quarrel with the philistine, in particular, is far from settled. The more lyrical the poet becomes regarding the unity of the good and the beautiful, the more skeptical becomes the plain man. What is this about the irresistible charm of virtue? Virtue has possessed the plain man's joyless fidelity for years, and he has never discovered any charm in her. The poet possesses a peculiar power of insight ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... whom I have found at length, has just bought one of the two copies which Ribalta received lately. The old leaguer believes everything, you know, when a Hafner is in the question.... I am more skeptical in the bad as well as in the good. It was only the account given by the trial which produced any impression on me, for ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... abstractedly to the young girl. But the sheath of the bowie-knife was a fixture in his body-belt, and he was obliged to withdraw the glittering blade by itself, and to hand it to her in all its naked terrors. The young girl received the weapons with a smiling complacency. Upon such altars as these the skeptical reader will remember that Mars had once hung his "battered shield," his lance, and ...
— Susy, A Story of the Plains • Bret Harte
... trifle skeptical as to the wisdom of permitting the stranger to attach himself to him. There was always the chance that he was but the essence of some hypnotic treachery which Tario or Jav was attempting to exert upon the Heliumite; and ...
— Thuvia, Maid of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... the invalid had never heard expressed before; but still somewhat skeptical, she asked, "Do you feel that way about ...
— The Lilac Lady • Ruth Alberta Brown
... transcendental regions of thought where Venus, and Cupid, and Calliope, and other sister muses bask in filmy clouds of golden maze. Here she realized among her ideal heroes and heroines, life as she wished it to be. Perhaps this was why her inclinations were just a little skeptical when she viewed life in ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... a very great mistake to suppose that when reaction follows collapse, in cases in which alcohol has been given, this result is always due to the alcohol. I have seen so many cases of severe collapse recover without alcohol that I cannot but be skeptical as to its necessity, and even as to its value. I was much struck many years ago by a case of post partum hemorrhage which was so severe that convulsions set in. I should then have given brandy if there had been any to ...
— Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why - What Medical Writers Say • Martha M. Allen
... looked up with a start, and his mildly inquiring glance should have convinced the most skeptical to the contrary. But apparently it had no such effect on ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... observation of life, will suffice to prove that no learning, no sagacity, affords a security against the greatest errors on subjects relating to the invisible world. Bayle and Chillingworth, two of the most skeptical of mankind, turned Catholics from sincere conviction. Johnson, incredulous on all other points, was a ready believer in miracles and apparitions. He would not believe in Ossian; but he was willing to believe in the second sight. ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... and I will bring you a letter which I have recently received, and when I have read it to you, you will understand why I have been so skeptical regarding what you have told me, and why I ...
— Virgie's Inheritance • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... cunning perfidy, every artful coquetry, every lie, every artifice which upsets the strongest and most skeptical, and places them at our mercy, like submissive animals. He loved me, he really loved me, that lascivious goat, who had never seen anything in a woman except a soft palliasse, and an instrument of convenience ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... overearnest person dislikes this type of humor and reacts against it by calling it "in bad taste." In the Middle Ages (and to-day among those opposed to the Catholic church), the priest and nun were slyly or coarsely attacked by the humorist, and in all times those somewhat skeptical find in religion, its ceremonials and customs, a field for ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... moon get smaller?" and the mother answers, "Because, dear, God cuts a piece off every day to make the stars with." The authorities, recognizing that their power lay in unquestioning belief, have always sanctified it and made the pious, non-skeptical type the ideal and punished the non-believer with death or ostracism. Fortunately for the race, the skeptic, if silenced, modifies the strength of the belief he attacks and in the course of time even they who have defended begin to shift from it and it becomes refuted. Beliefs, as Lecky[1] ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... Benito was skeptical. He said as much; but Tony was obdurate. Did he not know a second door when he saw one? Was he, furthermore, not a grown man and therefore entirely capable of distinguishing between his left hand and his right? Yes! Tony was all of that, and more, so Tony inserted the key in the lock—it would have ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Rutherford! No, no... we must go back of all that! It is in the hearts of the people that we must erect our defenses. It is the spirit of this godless and skeptical age that is undermining order. We must teach the people the truths of religion. We must inculcate lessons of sobriety and thrift, of reverence for constituted authority. We must set our faces against these new preachers of license and infidelity... we must go back to the old-time faith... to ...
— Prince Hagen • Upton Sinclair
... verification, between statement and proof, between appearance and reality. It is inspired by the impulse of investigation, tempered with distrust and edged with curiosity. It is at once avid of certainty and skeptical of seeming. It is enthusiastically patient, nobly literal, candid, tolerant, hospitable." This is the statement of a man of letters, who had found in science "a tonic force" ...
— Inquiries and Opinions • Brander Matthews
... see Abbott, Sect. 158. 'Main' is often found in sixteenth century literature in the sense of 'great,' 'strong,' 'mighty.' Caesar was, in his philosophy, an Epicurean, like most of the educated Romans of the time. Hence he was, in opinion, strongly skeptical about dreams and ceremonial auguries. But his conduct, especially in his later years, was characterized by many gross instances of ...
— The New Hudson Shakespeare: Julius Caesar • William Shakespeare
... will admit of the employment of these vessels in the ordinary packet service—we cannot pretend to form an opinion; but of the entire feasibility of the passage of the Atlantic by steam, as far as regards safety, comfort, and dispatch, even in the roughest and most boisterous weather, the most skeptical must now ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... the majority of these negroes went to their cabins that night and the most skeptical stayed in my kitchen all the rest of the night. But peace and quiet reigned once more and from that day as long as these tenants remained with me I did not have any trouble with them being superstitious but each time the tenants ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves - Kentucky Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... already learned, was as skeptical as myself in regard to Madre Moreno's spells, for the laughing manner in which she had spoken of her aunt's charms and witcheries, when we were on the hill and even in the presence of the Madre herself, convinced me of her intelligence and education. It was not this that ...
— The Beautiful Eyes of Ysidria • Charles A. Gunnison
... capacity to tell the truth. He saw facts as they were, and could tell them as they were, and he never told an untruth unless for very weighty reasons. He was preeminently a philosopher, of a happy, skeptical turn of mind. He ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... We know very little about Thibet. Foreigners are not permitted to enter the country, and only a few venturesome explorers have endured the hardships and faced the dangers of a visit to that forbidden land. Indeed, it is so perilous an undertaking that a skeptical public frequently takes the liberty to doubt the statements of the men who have gone there. But all agree that it is the hermit of nations, and its people are under the control of cruel and ignorant Buddhist priests, who endeavor to prevent them from ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis
... with Malcolm Murchison by which he was to drive us round by the long road that day, nor do I know exactly what motive influenced the old man's exertions in the matter. He was fond of Mabel, but I was old enough, and knew Julius well enough, to be skeptical of his motives. It is certain that a most excellent understanding existed between him and Murchison after the reconciliation, and that when the young people set up housekeeping over at the old Murchison ...
— The Conjure Woman • Charles W. Chesnutt
... heard it, and, as soon as she recovered from her surprise, inquired of my suitor how old he thought me; his reply was, "About sixteen." My mother smiled, and informed him that I was then not quite thirteen. He appeared to be skeptical on the subject, till he was again assured of the fact, when he took his leave with evident chagrin, but not without expressing his hopes that, on his return to England,—for he was going on a two years' expedition,—I should ...
— Beaux and Belles of England • Mary Robinson
... sight—I mean the subject of "Doubt." We are forced to face that subject. We have no choice. I would rather let it alone; but every day of my life I meet men who doubt, and I am quite sure that most Christian workers among men have innumerable interviews every year with men who raise skeptical difficulties ...
— Addresses • Henry Drummond
... salary in the family, cautiously accepted the invitation. So this was the man who, a few days later, faced the full board, who with affable confidence in his own abilities won over even the somewhat skeptical Whitehill, and who was, on the ninth day of December, 1912, elected Vice-President and underwriting manager of the Guardian Fire Insurance ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... don't believe that "it can't be." I wouldn't class myself as a "believer," exactly, because I've seen too many UFO reports that first appeared to be unexplainable fall to pieces when they were thoroughly investigated. But every time I begin to get skeptical I think of the other reports, the many reports made by experienced pilots and radar operators, scientists, and other people who know what they're looking at. These reports were thoroughly investigated and they are still unknowns. Of these reports, the radar- visual sightings are ...
— The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects • Edward Ruppelt
... curate privately thought David a bit morbid in his passionate devotion to the Woman's Cause, and this White Slave Traffic all rot. He had worked sufficiently in the bad towns of the South Welsh coast and had had an initiation into the lower-living parts of Birmingham and London to be skeptical about the existence of these poor, deluded virgins, lured from their humble respectable homes and thrust by Shakespearean procuresses, bawds, and bullies into an impure life. If they went to these places abroad it was probably with the hope of greater gains, better ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... operator turns on its power in spite of this ignorance and disbelief, and it works whether he believes it or not. Just so the skillful operator in Cosmic Therapeutics can generate, control and direct the power of the Cosmic consciousness which he understands, and it brings its results whether the skeptical mind of man accepts ...
— Freedom Talks No. II • Julia Seton, M.D.
... was that France made acquaintance with Lord Byron. She saw him first mysteriously enveloped in the romantic semblance of a Corsair, of a skeptical Harold, of a young lord who had despised and wounded his mother-country, from which he had almost been obliged to exile himself, in consequence of a series of eccentricities, faults, and—who knows?—of crimes, perhaps. ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... and colossal egoism of his later career. In the midst of public honors he valued more than all his delightful home and literary life, and his motto was Tecum habita. Surrounded by Pyrrhonism, and bent by the nature of his studies toward skeptical habits, how grandly he recovered himself in his maturity, and said,—'I do not know what to do with a metaphysical God, and I will have none but the God of the Bible, who is heart to heart with us.' 'My son shall believe in the letter of the Old ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... his nose-glasses with a sweetly sorrowful, omniscient, sympathetic, skeptical expression—the copyrighted expression of the editor beleagured ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... faith in the existence of moral principles which are capable of effective application. We believe, so far as the mass of children are concerned, that if we keep at them long enough we can teach reading and writing and figuring. We are practically, even if unconsciously, skeptical as to the possibility of anything like the same assurance in morals. We believe in moral laws and rules, to be sure, but they are in the air. They are something set off by themselves. They are so very "moral" that they have no working contact with ...
— Moral Principles in Education • John Dewey
... middle ages, however, many continued to look askance at poetry, and were skeptical as to its value. To Boethius, weeping in prison, came Philosophy to console him. She found him surrounded by the friends of his youth, the Muses, who now were inspiring him to write dreary verses of complaint. But these ...
— Rhetoric and Poetry in the Renaissance - A Study of Rhetorical Terms in English Renaissance Literary Criticism • Donald Lemen Clark
... description of the storm, we witness the corresponding internal heaving and tossing of a human soul. Everywhere we notice that Ulysses doubts at first, doubts Calypso, doubts Ino, doubts even his final safety when on land. He is the skeptical man, he never fails to call up the possibilities on the other side. Though a God give the promise, he knows that there are other Gods who do not promise, or may give a different promise to somebody else. It is the experience of life, this touch of doubt at first; it always accompanies the thinking ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... like her you need give nothing—only your stubborn will, your skeptical doubts, and the heart that will never know rest till at the feet ...
— Children's Edition of Touching Incidents and Remarkable Answers to Prayer • S. B. Shaw
... in the bank of L2,335, and we, as a matter of policy, wanted to have our capital ready at hand. The bank has a rule that a depositor must never have less than L300 to his credit. My friends were somewhat skeptical as to whether the bank did not regard their new customer, F. A. Warren, with some suspicion and as a depositor to be watched. My personal relations with the bank people convinced me everything was all right, but to convince my friends I determined to give them ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... time, if they showed themselves skeptical about our future, they proved most sympathetic over our past. Our description of the Friday footprints especially brought out much fellow-feeling. They knew the spot well, they said, and it was very bad. ...
— Noto, An Unexplored Corner of Japan • Percival Lowell
... of tenements being chosen for a committee, the province of which was to find ways of improving tenement conditions, was not lost on the public, and shouts of derision went up. The working population was skeptical, and with reason, of the good faith of this committee. Every act, beginning with the mild and ineffective one of 1867, designed to remedy the appalling conditions in tenement houses, had been stubbornly opposed by the landlords; ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus
... experienced eye the doctor's face looked a little skeptical at this last remark, and ...
— Daybreak: A Romance of an Old World • James Cowan
... charms we soon won the Murphy family and Tom was eager to see us shoot. He had heard that we shot deer, but he was rather skeptical that our arrows could do much damage to bear. So one of the first things he did after our arrival was to drag out an old dried hide and hang it on a fence in the corral and asked me to shoot an arrow through it. ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope
... in the Te-hua words when he tried to tell them what the peach was like, and what the pear was like, and the youth were skeptical as to peaches ...
— The Flute of the Gods • Marah Ellis Ryan
... quarters. Our light was from a candle jammed into a jam tin and set between a couple of sand bags that we used for a table. Our mate, who had not yet taken his turn on the gun-watch, was inclined to be rather skeptical about our story of the sniper, declaring it couldn't be possible that Fritzie could be carrying on such work in the very midst of our lines, and that our imaginations had been running riot with us. We had been playing about three-quarters of an hour when a gust of wind blew ...
— S.O.S. Stand to! • Reginald Grant
... as a flaming, fragrant garden, overrun with flowers, a sort of unspoiled island Eden, where bronze-brown Eves with faces and figures of surpassing loveliness disported themselves on the long white beaches, or loitered the lazy days away beneath the palms. But I went there skeptical at heart, for, ever since I journeyed six thousand miles to see the women for whom Circassia has long been undeservedly famous, I have listened with doubt and distrust to the tales told by returned travelers of the nymphs ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... improvement. It was proposed to build a hotel in the following spring, and to invite one or two decent families to reside there for the sake of The Luck, who might perhaps profit by female companionship. The sacrifice that this concession to the sex cost these men, who were fiercely skeptical in regard to its general virtue and usefulness, can only be accounted for by their affection for Tommy. A few still held out. But the resolve could not be carried into effect for three months, and the minority ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... perhaps because it withdrew him from his own home at a time when they had looked with fond expectation for his return; and here we have a glimpse into the beautiful soul of this younger sister, otherwise so little known to us. Elizabeth is skeptical of its ultimate success, but Louisa is fearful that he may work too hard and wants him to take good care of himself. She is delighted with the miniature of him, which they have lately received: "It has one advantage over the original,—I ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... and the prisoner's distress genuine, but, somehow, Coquenil was skeptical; he himself had eaten nothing since midday, he had been too busy and absorbed, and he was none the worse for it; besides, he remembered what a hearty luncheon the wood carver had eaten and he could not quite believe in this sudden exhaustion. ...
— Through the Wall • Cleveland Moffett
... woman's rights convention in 1862; but not even Mrs. Stanton could see the importance of such work at this time, believing that if women put all their efforts into winning the war, they would, without question, be rewarded with full citizenship. Susan was skeptical about this and disappointed that even the best women were so willing to be swept aside ...
— Susan B. Anthony - Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian • Alma Lutz
... a city attached to it; and in short, made himself, generally, at home. We are also fortunate in having some genealogical particulars as to his wife's antecedents; and it is to be regretted that modern historians, of the skeptical, the irreverent, and the startling schools, could not imitate the gravity, the good faith, and the respect for things established, by which the elder chroniclers were inspired. The apothecaries ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... cynical as he sees how easily the spot light is made to flash upon the unworthiest figures by the flimsiest mechanism. He drops his plummet into shoal and deep water and from his contemplation of the wreck-littered shore grows skeptical of the wisdom ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... not imagine that, because the term Rationalism has been frequently employed within the last few years, it is of very recent origin either as a word or skeptical type. The Aristotelian Humanists of Helmstedt were called Rationalists in the beginning of the seventeenth century, and Comenius applied the same epithet to the Socinians in 1688.[1] It was a common word in England two hundred years ago. Nor was it imported into the English ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... successes in processes the details of which are kept profoundly hidden from public scrutiny, and when the evidences of success are presented in the doubtful form of specimens which the public has no means of tracing directly to the process, the public is apt to be skeptical, and to express skepticism often in ...
— Scientific American, Volume XXIV., No. 12, March 18, 1871 • Various
... and the subsequent events were exciting, but it was only when Russia sent that one word "Mobilize" to Serbia that we suspected serious results. Even the summer visitors from the States exhibited signs of excitement, yet they were skeptical of the chances of war; that is, war that would really affect us! My newspaper in Montreal wired for me to come down to do war cartoons and I left my father ...
— "Crumps", The Plain Story of a Canadian Who Went • Louis Keene
... of her correspondence diverted her mind from its immediate duty. She failed to catch the instructor's eye, and the recitation proceeded without her assistance. Priscilla watched her from the back seat as she read the Yale letter with a skeptical frown, and made a grimace over the blue and the yellow; but before she had reached the Hotel A——, Priscilla was paying attention to the recitation again. It was coming her way, and she was anxiously forming an opinion on the essential ...
— When Patty Went to College • Jean Webster
... was the same ball that had carried away the testicle of his young friend, that had penetrated the ovary of the young lady, and, with some spermatozoa upon it, had impregnated her. With this conviction he approached the young man and told him the circumstances; the soldier appeared skeptical at first, but consented to visit the young mother; a friendship ensued which soon ripened into a happy marriage, and the pair had three children, none resembling, in the same degree as the first, the ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... the skeptical people of Cork, a party of them telegraphed all over the coast to see if they could not find Paul, to verify their story and from Skibbereen they learned that a man answering that description had passed through there and was now on ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... Caucasus, and the Albanian from the ancient hills of Epirus, had proved their birthright, the whole family, the Aryan family of language, seemed complete, and an historical fact, the original unity of all these languages, was established on a basis which even the most skeptical could not touch or shake. Scholars rushed in as diggers rush into a new gold field, picking up whatever is within reach, and trying to carry off more than they could carry, so that they might be foremost in the race, and claim as their own all that they had been the first to look at or to touch. ...
— Chips from a German Workshop - Volume IV - Essays chiefly on the Science of Language • Max Muller
... implies that you are skeptical. While that state of mind exists, I can do nothing—it ...
— The Miracle Man • Frank L. Packard
... things only or about great things too, such as the forgiveness of sins. We do the same thing with Jesus. We speak of him as of a unique personality, as the highest revelation of the Father, and the like, but always connected with a certain skeptical undercurrent of thought; but we do not appreciate him in his deepest soul and in the great motives of his life. He is not for modern theology what he is for orthodoxy, the Saviour of the world and the Redeemer ...
— To Infidelity and Back • Henry F. Lutz
... and objections remarkably well," went on Mr. Evringham. "I am willing and glad to admit truth where I once was skeptical, and I hope to understand much more. One thing I must say, however, I do object to—it is this worship of Mrs. Eddy. I know you don't call it that, but what does it matter what you call it, when you all give her slavish obedience? I should like to take the truth she has presented and make it more ...
— Jewel's Story Book • Clara Louise Burnham
... difference with me now," said I. "I am just as skeptical as if I hadn't a chance of conversion. Why, Doctor,—well, come now,—I'll argue the case with you. In the first place, all Church history is against you. There isn't a respectable author who upholds the doctrine of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... accounts of anthropophagi or maneaters, whom they met with in all parts of the old and new world, and their relations, true or false, were in those days, when people were addicted to the marvellous, universally credited. In the succeeding ages, when a more skeptical and scrutinizing spirit prevailed, several of these asserted facts were found upon examination to be false; and men, from a bias inherent in our nature, ran into the opposite extreme. It then became established as a philosophical ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... idle words, and the belief then expressed became with Hugh Worthington a firm, fixed principle, which his skeptical uncle tried in vain to eradicate. "There was a heaven, and she was there," comprised nearly the whole of Hugh's religious creed, if we except a vague, misty hope, that he, too, would some day find her, how or by what ...
— Bad Hugh • Mary Jane Holmes
... propositions which set up a definition as a universal, and add to it another as the reason for its necessity. The Reflective stage busies itself with the relation of dogmas to each other, and with the search for the grounds on which their necessity must rest. It is essentially critical, and hence skeptical. The explanation of the dogmas, which is carried on in this process of reasoning and skeptical investigation, is completed alone in speculative thinking, which recognizes the free unity of the content and ...
— Pedagogics as a System • Karl Rosenkranz
... of work which lay before me. Then my eyes turned to an open quarto book. It was the late Professor Deeping's "Assyrian Mythology," and embodied the result of his researches into the history of the Hashishin, the religious murderers of whose existence he had been so skeptical. To the Chief of the Order, the terrible Sheikh Hassan of Aleppo, he referred as a "fabled being"; yet it was at the hands of this "fabled being" that he had met his end! How incredible it all seemed. But I knew full well how ...
— The Quest of the Sacred Slipper • Sax Rohmer
... skeptical. Nor surprised. Evidently, his informant had had plenty of information. Or else his poker face was better than Bending ...
— Damned If You Don't • Gordon Randall Garrett
... been taken to the quarters of Major Valdez, who claimed to be an officer of the Federals, and by him he was thoroughly cross-examined. He had heard of the breaking up of the Confederacy, but not of the capture of Mr. Davis, and was evidently skeptical of our story as to being wreckers, and connected us in some way with the losing party, either as persons of note or a party escaping with treasure. However, O'Toole baffled all his queries, and was proof against both blandishments ...
— Famous Adventures And Prison Escapes of the Civil War • Various
... skeptical glances beneath relentlessly pulled eyebrows. He was really very nice, Mr. Jasper. Linda in a matter-of-fact voice replied that he had given her a twenty-dollar gold piece. Mr. Jasper was very generous. ...
— Linda Condon • Joseph Hergesheimer
... regard to the earthly life of this particular saint, he used to say: "There are some things a man cannot help puzzling about." It irked him—her success on Nepenthe. He knew the sailormen to be a horny-handed, skeptical, worldly brood. Why had they imported the cult of Eulalia from Spain; why had they chosen for their patroness a mawkish suffering nonentity, so different from those sunny goddesses of classical days? He concluded, lamely, that there was an element of the child in every Southerner; that men, refusing ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... passed rapidly for the blissful young Jenisons. The letters from the far West were full of promise. Even the skeptical David was compelled to admit to himself that the silver lining was discernible against the black cloud that Mary Braddock had so ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... Christopher Columbus. Consider the disheartening difficulties and vexatious delays he had to encounter; the doubts of the skeptical, the sneers of the learned, the cavils of the cautious, and the opposition, or at least the indifference, of nearly all. And then the dangers of an untried, unexplored ocean. Is it by any means probable he would have persevered ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... respectively marked the flight of time by phrases taken from the sermons of these eminent divines, and repeated in precisely the voice and accents of the original delivery. In startling proximity to the religious department I was shown the skeptical clocks. So near were they, indeed, that when, as I stood there, the various time-pieces announced the hour of ten, the war of opinions that followed was calculated to unsettle the firmest convictions. The observations of an Ingersoll which stood near me were particularly startling. The effect of ...
— With The Eyes Shut - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... never doubted that historians would follow until they had exhausted every possible hypothesis to create a science of history. Year after year passed, and little progress has been made. Perhaps the mass of students are more skeptical now than they were thirty years ago of the possibility that such a science can be created. Yet almost every successful historian has been busy with it, adding here a new analysis, a new generalization there; a clear and definite connection where before the rupture of idea was ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... forwarded to me here, interests me highly, and I thank you most sincerely for it. I am obliged to reply, however, that the affidavit of Messrs Miller and McKinlay astonished me very much. I cannot remember to have ever read anything of the kind anywhere and like you, I am very skeptical about it. I was in the world and a student at Amherst College in the year 1867, and was even then collecting the material for my history. I am pretty sure that I should have known of anything of this kind had it existed. ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... esbirro bailiff, guard. escalera staircase. escalon m. step of a stair. escapar vr. to escape. escape m. escape, flight; a todo —— at full speed. escarabajo beetle. escarbar to scratch. escarlata scarlet. escaso scanty, defective, slight. escena scene. esceptico skeptical. esclavo, -a slave. escoba broom. Escocia Scotland. escombro ruins, rubbish. esconder to hide. escopeta gun. escorbuto scurvy. escorpion m. scorpion. escribano notary. escribir to write. ...
— Novelas Cortas • Pedro Antonio de Alarcon
... not conceal his surprise; it was revealed in the skeptical, sneering, boring glance that he threw at the girl's face, now inscrutable. Her ...
— The Boss of the Lazy Y • Charles Alden Seltzer
... been rather skeptical until now. I had had the usual tolerant attitude of the man who is summoned from his bed to search for burglars, combined with the artificial courage of firearms. With the discovery of my empty ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... marbles and hunts the whetstone. His jackknife must be in good shape, for the making of a whistle is a delicate piece of handicraft. The knife has seen service in mumblepeg and as nut pick since whistle-making time last year. Surrounded by a crowd of spectators, some admiring, some skeptical, the boy selects his branch. There is an air of mystery about the proceeding. With a patient indulgent smile he rejects all offers of assistance. He does not attempt to explain why this or that branch will not ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... surrendered, almost wholly, to my new pursuit. I toiled with all the earnestness which distinguished my temperament, stimulated to a yet higher degree by those feelings of pride and pique, which were resolved to convince my skeptical uncle that I was not entirely without those talents, the assertion of which had so promptly provoked his sneer. Besides, I had already learned that no such scheme as mine could be successfully prosecuted, unless by a stern resolution; and this implied the ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... Mr. Fenshawe was skeptical. Mirage-phenomena were familiar to him, but never had they dealt with natural objects beyond a range of a few miles. For the most part, the mirage of the desert is a baseless illusion, depending on the bending of light-rays by air strata of differing densities. The rarer "looming," ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... forgotten that English drainers tell us of tools and their use, whereby drains may be open twenty inches lower than the feet of the workman; but we have never chanced to see that operation, and are skeptical as to the fact that work can thus be performed economically, except in very peculiar soils. That such a crack may be thus opened, is not doubted; but we conceive of no means by which earth, that requires the pick, can be moved ...
— Farm drainage • Henry Flagg French
... die before I should come to that," cried Zillah, passionately. "If what you say is true, I had better not let myself like any body." Then, laughing up in his face, she added: "By-the-way, I wonder if you are safe. You see you have made me so skeptical that I shall begin by suspecting my tutor. No, don't speak," she went on, in a half-earnest, half-mocking manner, and put her hand before his mouth. "The case is hopeless, as far as you are concerned. The warning has come too late. I love you as I thought I should ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... the skeptical Sam asked. "If we stay here very long your mother'll come and send us downstairs. What's ...
— Penrod and Sam • Booth Tarkington
... relief from Schmidt and O'Reilly, who felt that the situation was covered, but Winckel was more skeptical and less canny. ...
— Ted Marsh on an Important Mission • Elmer Sherwood
... fancy is substituted for the sober rules of criticism, and the word of God accommodated to his preconceived opinions. The rejection, open or covert, of the divine side, manifests itself in a cold, skeptical criticism, which denies or explains away all that is supernatural in the Bible; which, instead of seeking to discover and unfold that unity of plan and harmony of parts which belong to every work of God, ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... of the crowd Gray watched the effect of this offer. Divining rods, he well knew, were as old as the oil industry, but he was surprised to see that fully half of this audience appeared to put faith in the claim, and the other half were not entirely skeptical. A man at his side began reciting ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... The Secretary looked skeptical. "Your discoveries were remarkably ... apt. And it does seem clear that they made the appearance of hunting you, while going to some pains not to catch you. Mr. Coburn, how can we make contact ...
— The Invaders • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... an explanation of the existence of the Welsh language among these "Doegs," or sought to know any thing in regard to their traditional history, he omits entirely to say so. Without meaning to doubt his veracity, one feels skeptical, and desires a more intelligent and complete account of ...
— Ancient America, in Notes on American Archaeology • John D. Baldwin
... at first disposed to look upon it as a "yarn;" but the souvenir which Jake carried on his face was evidence that could not be doubted, and Cummings soon convinced the skeptical sailing master that the Chan Santa Cruz really had ...
— The Search for the Silver City - A Tale of Adventure in Yucatan • James Otis
... not in faith. His own nature in this respect is easy to understand but difficult to describe, since the words which must be used convey such different ideas to different persons. Thus, to say that he had the religious temperament, though he was skeptical as to all the divine and supernatural dogmas of the religions of mankind, will seem to many a self-contradiction, while to others it is entirely intelligible. In his boyhood one gets a flavor of irreverence ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... of the world is set forth by Sophocles: there is a divinely ordered control by immutable law, and the will of Zeus is unquestioned. The unitary conception is found also in Euripides notwithstanding his skeptical attitude toward the current mythology. The sense of symmetry potent in the poets forced them to this unitary conception of government, and the natural progress of ethical feeling led them to ascribe the highest ethical qualities ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... in the same manner of great and little, hard and soft, hot and cold, rough and smooth; and indeed of all the natural qualities and affections of bodies. If we suffer ourselves to imagine that their senses present to different men different images of things this skeptical proceeding will make every sort of reasoning on every subject vain and frivolous, even that skeptical reasoning itself which had persuaded us to entertain a doubt concerning the agreement of ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various
... to speak of the Jewish sects at the time of Christ. There were three of these, cardinally differing from each other in their theories of the future fate of man. First, there were the skeptical, materialistic Sadducees, wealthy, proud, few. They openly denied the existence of any disembodied souls, avowing that men utterly perished in the grave. "The cloud faileth and passeth away: so he that goeth down to the grave doth not return."29 We read in the Acts ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... feathers from the "yellow bird" carefully placed upon his desk, with the purpose of transmitting them at once to Master Cotton Mather who, with these palpable proofs of the reality of the spectral appearance would be able utterly to demolish all the skeptical unbelievers. ...
— Dulcibel - A Tale of Old Salem • Henry Peterson
... romance of Indian character and life. His mind dwells upon the squalor and wretchedness of their existence, the shiftlessness and incapacity of their natural development, their improvidence, their beastliness and forlorn debasement; and he is wholly skeptical about the savage virtues of constancy, magnanimity, and wild-wood dignity. He sighs over them another requiem, toned in the deep sympathy of a true Christian heart; but he does not lament in their sad method of decay the loss of any element of manhood or of the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... of amazement and horror broke out when he had finished. Only the chief sat regarding him in silence, a skeptical pucker lifting ...
— The Thrall of Leif the Lucky • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... the old Rosicrucians ever existed as an organized fraternity. I refer to the article Rosenkreuz in the "Handbuch der Freimaurerei" (Lenning), where this skeptical view is dominant. Other authors, on the contrary, believe in the existence of the old order and think that the freemasons who appeared in their present form in 1717 are the rosicrucians persisting, but with changed name. Joh. Gottl. Buhle, a contemporary of Nicolai, had already assumed that ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer
... perfunctory and skeptical. "Bli'me if you didn't mike me forget where I was—'ad me thinking I was in 'Yde Park, you did, listening to a bloody horator ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... type, every attempt failed, until at last the spirits signified by knocks that he was a disturbing agency, and that while he remained all our efforts would fail. Upon this some of the company proposed that he should leave; of which invitation he took advantage, with a skeptical ...
— The Autobiography of a Quack And The Case Of George Dedlow • S. Weir Mitchell
... I was skeptical as to this special brand of philanthropy, but I was touched by the grief of her disappointed hopes. I knew the particular sting. At the same time my hand twitched to shake her for going into this thing in so impractical a way. Teaching and preaching in a foreign land may include romance, ...
— The House of the Misty Star - A Romance of Youth and Hope and Love in Old Japan • Fannie Caldwell Macaulay
... I will say that up to the time of my witnessing what I have narrated I was skeptical on the subject of our power over evil spirits. I had heard of such manifestations, but had never seen them with my own eyes. My experience here impressed me with the fact that we could attain such power, and showed me the stern necessity of living near to God; for man, in ...
— The Mormon Menace - The Confessions of John Doyle Lee, Danite • John Doyle Lee
... are the more conspicuous in collision with the justice which he sometimes does us, and the very indignant admiration which, under some aspects, he grants to us. 1. Our English literature he admires with some gnashing of teeth. He pronounces it "fine and sombre," but, I lament to add, "skeptical, Judaic, Satanic—in a word, antichristian." That Lord Byron should figure as a member of this diabolical corporation will not surprise men. It will surprise them to hear that Milton is one of its Satanic leaders. Many are the generous and eloquent Frenchmen, besides Chateaubriand, ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... little child. And on the hills and through the intervales over which they journeyed, in the glare of the eager sun or beneath the wattled boughs, the emanations of the Divine filled her with transports so contagious that they affected even Thomas, who was skeptical by birth; and when, after the descent from Hermon, two or three of the disciples mused together over the spectacle which they had seen, the rhyme of her lips parted ineffably. She too had seen him aureoled with the sun, dazzling as the snow-fields on the heights. To her ...
— Mary Magdalen • Edgar Saltus
... the skeptical explanation, which claims that the likeness of the myths is vastly exaggerated and much more the work of the scholar at his desk than of the honest worshipper; the historical explanation, which suggests unrecorded proselytisms, ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... the same operations in life as does an animal. Only to be sure, these operations are performed in a rather different way. A plant has a digestive, or feeding, system, a breathing apparatus, the power to rid itself of waste and to make seed; it moves, and it grows, too. Philip looked a bit skeptical when I said it moves. Well, it does. Of course, a plant does not walk about, and move from spot to spot. But a plant can and does move. Why it can turn itself around back to, even. Just look at my geranium slips there! they seem to be breaking their backs to peep out of the window ...
— The Library of Work and Play: Gardening and Farming. • Ellen Eddy Shaw
... any relaxation to speak of, except to demonstrate the truth of spiritualism. He does love to monkey with the supernatural, and he delights in getting hold of some skeptical friend and convincing him of the presence of spirits beyond a doubt. I've known him to ignore two cases of croup and one case of twins to attend a seance and help convince a doubting Thomas on ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... connection it is interesting to note that the discoveries of the German explorer, Schliemann, upon the site of ancient Troy, indicate that Homer "followed actual occurrences more closely than an over-skeptical historical criticism was once ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... general will and welfare may point to the future management of international relations through a world congress, the whole mass of those whose business has been the direction of international relations is likely to be either skeptical or actively hostile to such an experiment. All the foreign offices and foreign ministers, the diplomatists universally, the politicians who have specialized in national assertion, and the courts that have symbolized and embodied it, all the people, in fact, who will be in control of the settlement, ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... if all we had to dread were the revolution which is held up as a specter to terrify us! Since I cannot imagine a society more detestable than ours, I feel more skeptical than alarmed in regard to that which will replace it. If I should have to suffer from the change, I should be consoled by thinking that the executioners of that day were the victims of the previous time, and the hope of something better would ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy
... party in power has refused to enfranchise woman, being skeptical as to her moral influence in government, yet with strange inconsistency they alike seek the aid of her voice and pen in all important political struggles. While not morally bound to obey the laws made without their consent, yet we find women the ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... hide the fact that some of us were skeptical of the outcome. That a man of sixty-five should have a thirst for learning was not remarkable. But that a man whose life had been spent in scenes of excitement, who had been associated with deeds and events that stir the blood when we read of them to-day, a man who had lived ...
— Craftsmanship in Teaching • William Chandler Bagley |
