"Speculation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Montevarchi furnished matter for plenty of conversation. The majority inclined to the belief that the girl had lost her head and had run home, but as neither Sant' Ilario nor his cousin returned, there was much speculation. The prince said he believed that they had found Faustina at her father's house and had stayed to dinner, whereupon some malicious person remarked that it needed a revolution in Rome to produce hospitality in such ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford
... cried Madame Desvarennes, interrupting her nephew's oration. "I am very fond of mills, but not word-mills. You are talking too much about it to be sincere. So many words can only serve to disguise the nullity of your projects. You want to embark in speculation? With what money?" ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet
... all useful things. 'Do nothing, and everything will be done,' was the doctrine which he inherited from his great master Lao Tzu. To resolve action into thought, and thought into abstraction, was his wicked transcendental aim. Like the obscure philosopher of early Greek speculation, he believed in the identity of contraries; like Plato, he was an idealist, and had all the idealist's contempt for utilitarian systems; he was a mystic like Dionysius, and Scotus Erigena, and Jacob Bohme, and held, with them and with ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... last triumph in the delicate art of his profession had given him no exhilarating sense of power. He saw the woman's face, miserable and submissive, and he wondered. But he brought himself up with a jerk: this was the danger of permitting any personal feeling or speculation ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... the northwest side of the room, he passes down the front from left to right slowly counting. Setting down the number in a memorandum book, he commands in a squeaky feminine voice, "Break ranks," which most of us have already done. Much speculation arose as to the nature and status of this singular being. His face was smooth and childlike, yet dry and wrinkled, so that it was impossible to tell whether he was fifteen or fifty. A committee was said to have waited upon him, and ...
— Lights and Shadows in Confederate Prisons - A Personal Experience, 1864-5 • Homer B. Sprague
... something more; perhaps, as a girl, she had dreamt that a married woman is not merely the wife and mother, but also her husband's lover. But she soon saw that love went for little with Philippe, a studious man, much more interested in mental speculation and social problems than in any manifestation of sentimental feeling. She therefore loved him as he wished to be loved, stifling within herself, like smothered flames, a whole throbbing passion made up of unsatisfied longings, restrained ...
— The Frontier • Maurice LeBlanc
... This backward speculation, had it begun to play, however, would have been easily arrested; for it was at present to come over Amerigo as never before that his remarkable father-in-law was the man in the world least equipped with different appearances for different hours. He was simple, ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... was settled at once. Well, we were glad enough, to be sure; but a very few days after, my partner called me into the private room, and said he wanted to consult me. He seemed in high spirits, and he told me he had just heard of a famous speculation, by which we could both make our fortunes at once. He explained what it was, and I saw with shame and regret, that no really honest man could join in it: I told him so; I told him plainly I would have nothing to do with it. You may think what followed; the deeds of partnership ...
— Fanny, the Flower-Girl • Selina Bunbury
... is not a matter of speculation, but of certainty. It was—what his contemporaries considered elevated piety—a most singular mixture of the barest and basest superstition with some very strong plain common-sense. The superstition was of the style set ...
— Earl Hubert's Daughter - The Polishing of the Pearl - A Tale of the 13th Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... mischief had been done through unsuspected parties. It has been shown that other Indians, not yet encountered, were in the vicinity, and it was not absolutely certain that they were not the criminals. The thought, however, opened the illimitable fields of speculation, and the hunter was wise in determining to hold to his original belief until assured ...
— Two Boys in Wyoming - A Tale of Adventure (Northwest Series, No. 3) • Edward S. Ellis
... that the faithful companion of his laborious mortal career will accompany him into the everlasting regions; and, indeed, the idea that animals possess actually an inferior soul, and that, maltreated as they are on earth, they too have their appropriate heaven, has by many been considered a speculation less ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19. No. 538 - 17 Mar 1832 • Various
... dogs, kept the villages partly alive. We observed one young urchin sitting on a stone opposite a dog, and he and the dog took alternate bites off a platter-shaped cake, big enough to require both his hands to hold it. Whether the dog ever snapped more than his share was matter of speculation to us. It was an education for him in good manners, and when we were sitting at dinner we wished our companions had enjoyed it. They fed with their heads in their plates, splashed and clattered jaws, without paying us any hospitable attention whatever, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... in common the faculty of quickening speculation and compelling the minds of men to combat and discussion. About the English poet a literature of contention has been in process of accretion ever since he was discovered to be Shakespeare; and about the Dutch painter and etcher there has gradually accumulated ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... criticism of Shakespeare has been fundamentally affected by one important fact. The chronological order of the plays, for so long the object of the vaguest speculation, of random guesses, or at best of isolated 'points,' has been now discovered and reduced to a coherent law. It is no longer possible to suppose that The Tempest was written before Romeo and 'Juliet; ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... thus already begun to bear fruit. As for himself, the doubt he had expressed was merely a doubt—a matter of speculation, not of feeling. Still, while it remained in his mind, it was a sufficient reason for using every possible means of discovering the truth, and scarcely needed the additional impulse given by his ...
— A Canadian Heroine, Volume 2 - A Novel • Mrs. Harry Coghill
... think he would have abstained from telling you, because he might have thought you would have considered it a rash speculation." ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty
... still pointed out the southerly course of the river across the endless plain; and it became natural to speculate on its source or origin; whether it was the drainage of a swamp, or the outlet of some lagoon, fed by the Cordillera to the eastward. But to speculation alone was I reduced, it not being permitted me to clear up this point. All I could do was to give one long lingering look to the southward before I returned. In that direction, however, no curling smoke denoted the presence of the savage; ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes
... prig, but would probably be a member of the Government. Mounser Green liked Dukes, and loved a Duchess in his heart of hearts. If he could only be assured that this niece would not be repudiated he thought that the speculation might answer in spite of any ambiguity ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope
... states with a new political and administrative organization, the rapid progress of intelligence, showed their effect everywhere in the same rationalizing temper, extending not only over theology but over each department of thought, the same interest in political and social speculation, the same drift towards physical inquiry, the same tendency to a diffusion and popularization of knowledge. Everywhere the tone of thought became secular, scientific, prosaic; everywhere men looked away from the past with a certain ...
— History of the English People, Volume VII (of 8) - The Revolution, 1683-1760; Modern England, 1760-1767 • John Richard Green
... together, having first seen that everything was quiet, took their severally assigned places, and laid themselves down for repose. The pedler contenting himself with guessing that "them 'ere chaps did not make no great deal by that speculation." ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... the Battle of the Nile, even though the mishap of so great an officer as Troubridge left him on the wrong side. St. Vincent, positive as he was, had shrunk from distinguishing by name even Nelson at the battle which had won for himself his title. This naturally suggests the speculation whether the joint presence of St. Vincent and Troubridge at the Admiralty was not the cause of this futility; but ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... when I started working in journalism, I thought it was the finest profession going. It seemed to me to have all the responsibilities of the world on its back. I considered it a force with which to educate, help, and refine all peoples, and all classes. But I found it was only a money speculation after all. How much profit could be made out of it? That was the chief point of action. That was the mainspring of every political discussion—and in election times, one side had orders to abuse the other, merely to keep up the ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... travel and business in its neighborhood. As I said before, this is where two railroads fork. In fact that is the leading industry here. The growth of the town is naturally slow, but it is a healthy growth. There is nothing in the nature of dangerous or wild-cat speculation in the advancement of this place, and while there has been no noticeable or rapid advance in the principal business, there has been no falling off at all and these roads are forking as much to-day as they did before the war, while the same three men who were present for the first glad moment ...
— Nye and Riley's Wit and Humor (Poems and Yarns) • Bill Nye
... lot; and if he ever wondered whether a long succession of ignorant and sensual blacks were to be driven into the field by the whip every day in Saint Domingo, for evermore, he had cut short the speculation as inconsistent with his stoical habit of endurance, and his Christian principle of trust. It was not till his youth was past that he had learned anything of the revolutions of the world—too late to bring them into his speculations and his hopes. He had read, from year to year, of the ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau
... garment which so disfigured him that morning has been the occasion of much false speculation on the part of those whose business it was to inquire into the crime with which it is in a most unhappy way connected, I may as well explain here and now why so fastidious a gentleman as Randolph Stone came to wear it. The gentleman ...
— That Affair Next Door • Anna Katharine Green
... thought of the seventeenth century. His talk was so engaging that it was delightful to hear him speak of anything, and presently there came out of the unexpected region of his thought the thing I had been waiting for. He called my attention to the fact that in every generation all sorts of speculation and thinking tend to fall under the formula of the dominant thought of the age. For example, after the Newtonian Theory of the universe had been developed, almost all thinking tended to express itself in the analogies of the Newtonian Theory, and since the Darwinian Theory has reigned amongst ...
— The New Freedom - A Call For the Emancipation of the Generous Energies of a People • Woodrow Wilson
... punished by being deprived of a hand or a foot or of something else. Therefore Dionysius says (Div. Nom. iv) that the natural gifts remain entire in them. Consequently their natural knowledge was not diminished. The second kind of knowledge, however, which comes of grace, and consists in speculation, has not been utterly taken away from them, but lessened; because, of these Divine secrets only so much is revealed to them as is necessary; and that is done either by means of the angels, or "through some temporal workings of Divine power," ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... sent you was one directed to the care of Edward White, India House, for Mrs. Hazlitt. Which Mrs. H. I don't yet know; but Allsop has taken it to France on speculation. Really it is embarrassing. There is Mrs. present H., Mrs. late H., and Mrs. John H.; and to which of the three Mrs. Wigginses it appertains, I know not. I wanted to open it, but ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... office opened the queue reached from the Opera House steps nearly to the tramway Haltestelle, and much speculation was going on as to how many would be sent empty away. Inch by inch we moved forward, mounted the steps one by one, and came within the relative warmth of the vestibule. At last the weary waiting-time was over; the young subaltern stepped before the guichet and, pointing to a handbill, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, March 12, 1919 • Various
... importation of African slaves into America, had the effect of preventing more suffering than it inflicted, it was good, both in the motive and the result. I freely admit that, it is hardly possible to justify morally, those who begun and carried on the slave trade. No speculation of future good to be brought about, could compensate the enormous amount of ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... I understand the significance of your similitude," I replied, a little annoyed at this inopportune indulgence of the pastoral privilege. "You would imply the dangerous tendency of a certain sort of philosophical speculation; and so far we doubtless agree. Yet I ought to say, that, in cases where personal investigation is possible, I would take neither popular clamor nor learned dogmatism as conclusive evidence against any writer's honesty and usefulness. With the vulgar, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... Speculation ran high as to who the enterprising new tradesman could be. Some said it was Mrs Wisdom. Others said one of the Penchurch shops was going to run it as a branch. Others suggested that some of the seniors had a hand in it. But the ...
— The Cock-House at Fellsgarth • Talbot Baines Reed
... precise, I have received exactly seventy-two thousand pounds, Mr. Narkom. But, as I tell you, I have to-day but one hundred pounds of that sum left. Lost in speculation? Oh, dear no! I've not invested one farthing in any scheme, company, or purchase since the night you gave me my chance and helped me ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew
... which excites not only all the speculation but all the mysticism in man. I contemplate its manifestations—equally deadly and vital—with feelings of wonder and awe. I always search for an electrician and listen to his stories of the mysterious power ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... well satisfied as he wished to be on this head, when young Jordan arrived in S—. His business there was soon known, and Barnaby saw a chance of getting out of his unpromising speculation. To Jordan he became at once very attentive and polite; and gradually drew from him a full statement of the business that brought him to S—. It did not take a very long time for Barnaby to satisfy him, that, by purchasing his mill and sawing up the heavy timber with which his ...
— Lessons in Life, For All Who Will Read Them • T. S. Arthur
... day, even in the golden north, was a million dollars the prize for a dog race. The country had been swept of dogs. No animal of speed and endurance escaped the fine-tooth comb that had raked the creeks and camps, and the prices of dogs had doubled and quadrupled in the course of the frantic speculation. ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... think, either, nor did he understand Hawthwaite's reserve. But he wasted no time in speculation: he had already made up his mind that unless something definite arose at the resumed inquiry he would employ professional detective assistance and get to work on lines of his own. He had already seen ...
— In the Mayor's Parlour • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... over in evident speculation. The man was tall and broad shouldered. His face was clean shaven. The features were strong, with a regularity that many people would consider handsome. He was what one would call a big man, but this appearance of bigness arose more from a heavy frame, and exceptional muscular development, than ...
— The Sheridan Road Mystery • Paul Thorne
... when Samp should have been grubbing at his law books, but nary a grub for him. He was playing horse for dear life. And right there the fellows all left him behind. Some were buying real estate for speculation; some running for office; some starting a bank; and others lending money at two per cent. a month, and leading in the prayer-meeting. So Samp kind of hitched up his ambition and took the slack out ...
— In Our Town • William Allen White
... which the workman has neither the leisure nor the education to enjoy. The money paid by the artist to the artisan represents nothing which the former rightfully owns or can give, but only a claim to the labor of other men, enforced by the system of wage-economy. Of course, not only art but all speculation, all pure science and disinterested historical knowledge, is subject to this criticism. And such criticism is no longer purely academic, for to-day there exist large masses of men in every community determined to bring about a "world dictatorship of the proletariat" based on ...
— The Principles Of Aesthetics • Dewitt H. Parker
... enemies, rivals, tells whom and when you will marry, advises you upon love, courtship, marriage, business, speculation, transactions of every nature. If you are worried, perplexed, or in trouble come to this wonderful man. He reads your life like an open book; he overcomes evil influences, reunites the separated, causes speedy and happy marriage with the one of your choice, ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve
... developed her possibilities. With her looks, her boldness, her cleverness, she had the makings of a magnificent adventuress. As he painted, he wondered what she was going to do, and become; and he watched her not only with a painter's eye intent upon the present, but with keen speculation upon the future. ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... see a man go to pieces as Benson's doing, and Clarke's ruining the fellow. He must have got two or three thousand dollars out of him one way or another and isn't satisfied with that. Lent him money on mortgage to start a foolish stock-raising speculation and keeps him well supplied with drink. The fellow's weak, but he has his ...
— Blake's Burden • Harold Bindloss
... was worrying Joe was speculation over the fate of Ham Logan. Not since Joe had first taken the old and broken circus actor into his employ had Ham been away more than a few hours at a time, and then Joe knew where he was. This time Ham had ...
— Joe Strong The Boy Fire-Eater - The Most Dangerous Performance on Record • Vance Barnum
... bordering on religious hysteria. Quite determined to be true to Christ, they had been demoralized by the strain of facing constant hostility. They had begun to take excessive interest in unfulfilled prophecy and eschatological speculation. The result was that individuals had become careless as to ...
— The Books of the New Testament • Leighton Pullan
... are surely exaggerated. The play, like many others, was plainly written only to divert, without any moral purpose, and is therefore not likely to do good; nor can it be conceived, without more speculation than life requires or admits, to be productive of much evil. Highwaymen and housebreakers seldom frequent the playhouse, or mingle in any elegant diversion; nor is it possible for any one to imagine that he may rob with safety, because he sees Macheath reprieved upon the stage. ...
— Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young, and Others • Samuel Johnson
... healthy contrast with the old. It allowed four land-offices in Ohio and Indiana. Lands once offered at auction and not sold could be pre-empted directly by private individuals on easy terms. Actual settlement and cultivation were thus furthered, speculation curbed, and the government ...
— History of the United States, Volume 2 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... anywhere under the range by sinking twenty or thirty feet. There is also under the same range a narrow strip of fine grassy country for the whole length of the range, namely about 160 miles. I have every confidence that, should the country be settled, it would prove a remunerative speculation, and, if water can be procured on the table land, would be the finest ...
— Explorations in Australia • John Forrest
... citizens. They have with our American friends of whom I speak at all events one virtue in common, they are great speculators. In the case of our southern friends this is not a matter to be deplored by us, for American speculation has been of direct material benefit to Canada, and we must regret that our American citizens are not coming over to us so fast as are the Scotch, the Irish, the Germans, and the Scandinavians. Morally, also, it is not to be ...
— Memories of Canada and Scotland - Speeches and Verses • John Douglas Sutherland Campbell
... were held. The teacher offered a prize to each grade, the pupil receiving the highest average in all studies to receive the prize. Much excitement, no little speculation, and a great deal of studying ensued. Clinton felt fairly confident over all his studies except spelling. So he carried his spelling-book home every night, and he and his mother spent the evenings in wrestling with the long ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... playing that game then there was no reason why one should not contemplate the completest reversal of all its methods and the alteration and abandonment of every rule. Correctness of conduct, the doctor held, was an imperative concomitant of all really free thinking. Revolutionary speculation is one of those things that must be divorced absolutely from revolutionary conduct. It was to the neglect of these obvious principles, as the doctor considered them, that the general muddle in contemporary marital affairs was very largely due. We left divorce-law revision to exposed ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... said last night we'd have to begin and feed the pigs some, too, before long." Chicken Little sighed. This speculation in ...
— Chicken Little Jane on the Big John • Lily Munsell Ritchie
... understand you to say," he asked finally, "that you were planning to relieve my mind of the burden of speculation?" ...
— The Unspeakable Gentleman • John P. Marquand
... carnivorous spectre, flaps its dusky wings along the sky of sociology, now saddened Mrs. Singleton's meditations, as she watched the lengthening shadow cast by the tower upon the court-yard; but she was not addicted to abstract speculation, and the words of her favorite hymn epitomized her thoughts: "Though every prospect pleases, and ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... easy to see that prosperity of this kind must very soon find its limit.... When a further fall in the assignats took place this prosperity would necessarily collapse, and be succeeded by a crisis all the more destructive the more deeply men had engaged in speculation under the influence of the first ...
— Fiat Money Inflation in France - How It Came, What It Brought, and How It Ended • Andrew Dickson White
... of but little importance. There may be a miscarriage of justice (that is, a thwarting of our particular wishes) even there. Perhaps Mrs. Yorke was aware that her son's clouded face did not portend religious or metaphysical speculation, for she ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... speculation, dissuade any one whomsoever from brooding over the problems of the unknown, over the vast abysses of science or philosophy. But we have always to come back from these far journeys to the point where we are, often to a place where we seem to stand ...
— The Simple Life • Charles Wagner
... the farmers, but only to guarantee to them when necessary a minimum price which will insure them a profit where they are asked to attempt new crops and to secure the consumer against extortion by breaking up corners and attempts at speculation, when they occur, by fixing temporarily a reasonable price at ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume VI (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... affirmation, knowing that the Divine beauty and goodness is not that which can or does fall within our conception, but that which is above and beyond, incomprehensible; chiefly in that condition called by the philosopher speculation of phantoms, and by the theologian, vision through analogies, reflections and enigmas, because we see, not the true effects and the true species of things, or the substance of ideas, but the shadows, vestiges and simulacra of them, like those who are inside the cave and have from ...
— The Heroic Enthusiast, Part II (Gli Eroici Furori) - An Ethical Poem • Giordano Bruno
... to every reflecting and virtuous mind, and exhibit the continuance of the union as a primary object of patriotic desire. Is there a doubt whether a common government can embrace so large a sphere? Let experience solve it. To listen to mere speculation in such a case were criminal. We are authorized to hope that a proper organization of the whole, with the auxiliary agency of governments for the respective subdivisions, will afford a happy issue to the experiment. It is well worth a ...
— America First - Patriotic Readings • Various
... up by this array of famous cities offered such scope for endless surmise and speculation that they were surprised at the flight of time when Mrs. Matson ...
— Baseball Joe Around the World - Pitching on a Grand Tour • Lester Chadwick
... less than ever inclined to speculation about Diana's feelings now that she was in love, and blest with the sweet consciousness that her love was returned. Tender and affectionate as she was, she could not quite escape that taint of ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... affections of a fugitive nation, was prolonged in the pride of a conquering one; and beside the memorials of departed happiness, were elevated the trophies of returning victory. The ship of war brought home more marble in triumph than 'the merchant vessel in speculation; and the front of St. Mark's became rather a shrine at which to dedicate the splendor of miscellaneous spoil, than the organized expression of any fixed architectural ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin
... had returned, and its elastic vigor was already reviving, when two remarkable harvests in succession, and an increased trade with the American continent, raised it to prosperity. One sign of vigor, the roll of capital, was wanting; speculation was fast asleep. The government of the day seems to have observed this with regret. A writer of authority on the subject says that, to stir stagnant enterprise, they directed "the Bank of England to issue about four millions in advances to the state and in enlarged discounts." I give ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... fancy those fragments were pretty well used up, if all the finery in this house is paid for," said Agnes, with a scornful laugh. "Even as a speculation, my own project is ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... continuously for more than two years. It has much essential kinship with the "Treasure of the Humble," though it differs therefrom in treatment; for whereas the earlier work might perhaps be described as the eager speculation of a poet athirst for beauty, we have here rather the endeavour of an earnest thinker to discover the abode of truth. And if the result of his thought be that truth and happiness are one, this was by no means the object wherewith he set forth. Here he is no longer content with exquisite visions, ...
— Wisdom and Destiny • Maurice Maeterlinck
... been noted as well, so that in Esther's opinion Wilford was a domestic tyrant, and Katy was an angel. There was no danger then of Esther's repeating anything forbidden. She had, of course, her own private speculation on the subject, and when she learned that the tall, handsome man who came within an hour after Katy's arrival was Dr. Grant, about whom she had heard both her young mistress and Mrs. Cameron talk so much, her woman's wits came ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... was at worst but a pardonable misdemeanor and perhaps wholly innocent in its nature, could not fail in time to react violently, first through the process of disgust, then through that of inquiry, and finally to the carrying of speculation to extremes, and practically pronouncing harmless and innocent that which was really vice. The popular mind, rebounding from the Puritan ideas, did not pause to discriminate between the truth and error which were so intimately mingled in their system, but, sweepingly denouncing all the theories ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... have opened to us and displayed before us the great treasures of His secrets? May it not be said that we do not think we have to do with God? For had we any regard to His Majesty we would not dare to turn the doctrine which proceeds from Him into some kind of philosophic speculation. In short, it is impossible to deny that it is our great shame, not to say fearful condemnation, that we have so well known the truth of God, and have so little ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Volume I - Basil to Calvin • Various
... of the dog that is going to bite you—this principle should be introduced in respect of marriage and speculation. ...
— The Note-Books of Samuel Butler • Samuel Butler
... will return, why no news has been received from a son or husband who is serving in the army, where they should dig a well so as to get plenty of good water near the surface, whether it would be fortunate for them to venture on some trading speculation, whether they should go on some projected journey, in what direction they should search for lost cattle, or, more frequently than any of the above, they come, men and women, old and young, to have the general luck of their lives examined into. Great is their amazement when ...
— James Gilmour of Mongolia - His diaries, letters, and reports • James Gilmour
... buying of breadstuffs for exportation, was really one of speculation upon the New York market as affected by the European markets,—a species of brokerage, which, ostensibly and in the eyes of the world attended by great risk, was really a thing of specifically safe and certain profits, thanks to the telegraphic system, the ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 40, February, 1861 • Various
... centre of our colony in Algeria, and now he was promoting a company for exporting grain and flour from America. Several times Cayrol had tried to bring Herzog and Madame Desvarennes together. The banker had an interest in the grain and flour speculation, but he asserted that it would not succeed unless the mistress had a hand in it. Cayrol had a blind faith in the ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet
... of field work performed by himself and assistants. That account will form the first volume of his final report, and will consist almost wholly of descriptions, plans, and figures of the ancient works examined, narrative and speculation being entirely excluded. It will also include a paper by Mr. Gerard Fowke on the stone articles of the collection. The second volume will be devoted to the geographic distribution of the various types of mounds, archeologic maps and charts, and a general discussion of the ...
— Eighth Annual Report • Various
... It's a matter of speculation, at best; the lucky win. If we can get an order for the sale, we shall win handsomely. But, without producing the child, it will be next to impossible to get the order. So we must have her, by fair means ...
— True Riches - Or, Wealth Without Wings • T.S. Arthur
... Hawtrey and the Major. Supposing—only supposing that—driven by despair, of course—she married that fellow Markham? For the first time in his life Mr. Waddington experienced jealousy. Elise had ceased to be the subject of dreamy, doubtful speculation and had become the object of an uneasy passion. He could give her passion, if it was passion that she wanted; but, because of Fanny, he could not give her a position in the county, and it was just possible that ...
— Mr. Waddington of Wyck • May Sinclair
... large sums upon those who fall into his hands. One of our guides was a fine, tall young man, the very image of Ben Habib the Arab. They were carrying dried buffalo's meat to the market at Tete as a private speculation. ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... a familiar phrase, turned out an accomplished young lady. But alas! she had been qualified for a station which fate seemed determined not to let her occupy; for just at this important period of her life, her father became involved in an unfortunate speculation, that ended in ruin, dishonor, and his own bodily confinement in prison for debts he could never discharge. Naturally high spirited and proud, this misfortune and persecution proved too much for his philosophy—and what was more, his reason—and in a state of mental derangement, ...
— Ella Barnwell - A Historical Romance of Border Life • Emerson Bennett
... too absurd that she, so difficult to interest, so inaccessible, so fastidious, so satiated with all that was brilliant and celebrated, should find herself seriously spending her thoughts, her pity, and her speculation on an adventurer of the African Army! She laughed a little at herself as she stretched out her hand for a new volume of French poems dedicated to her by their accomplished writer, who ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... the office we observe a lowsized, whiskered man. Intelligence beams from a lofty brow; sharp features an aquiline nose tell of Jewish character; his eye glistens and dulls as the heaving heart throbs with its tides of joy and sorrow. Speculation, that glides at times into golden dreams, brightens his whole features with a sunbeam of joy; but suddenly it is clouded. Some unseen intruder casts a baneful shadow on the ungrasped prize; the features ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... Conviction, were it never so excellent, is worthless till it convert itself into Conduct. Nay properly Conviction is not possible till then; inasmuch as all Speculation is by nature endless, formless, a vortex amid vortices, only by a felt indubitable certainty of Experience does it find any centre to revolve round, and so fashion itself into a system. Most true is it, as a wise man teaches us, that 'Doubt of any sort cannot be removed except ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... required to give a list of the prices-current for the various articles of produce grown in their different provinces; a regulation which, of course, tends to keep the trade on a sound footing, and to prevent reckless speculation, which the want of market information ...
— Recollections of Manilla and the Philippines - During 1848, 1849 and 1850 • Robert Mac Micking
... lodging-houses in Hadleigh now; it would be a hazardous speculation, and one likely to fail; they had not sufficient furniture for such a purpose, and they dare not use up their little capital too quickly. They were too young, too, to carry out such a thing, Nan did not add "and too pretty," though she colored and hesitated here. ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey
... His reason for that speculation was the dance now being performed in the center of the hall—their fight with the gorp being enacted in a series of bounds and stabbings. He was sure that he could no longer trust his eyes when the claw knife of the victorious dancer-hunter apparently ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton
... development of man. No age knows it all. It was almost a lo, here, and a lo, there, with him, so large was his bump of wonder, so unlimited was his appetite for the incredible and the improbable in the domain of human knowledge and speculation. Great was the man's faith, great was his hope, great was ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... honestly and dispassionately, without fear and without useless speculation to obey it—this is my sole destination, this the whole aim of my existence. My life ceases to be an empty sport, without truth or meaning. There is something to be done, simply because it must be done—namely, that which conscience ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... put on the old man. The madness of the poets, again, is a favourite notion of Plato's, which occurs also in the Laws, as well as in the Phaedrus, Ion, and elsewhere. There are traces in the Laws of the same desire to base speculation upon history which we find in the Critias. Once more, there is a striking parallel with the paradox of the Gorgias, that 'if you do evil, it is better to be punished than to be unpunished,' in the Laws: 'To live having all ...
— Laws • Plato
... marriage to be? Why should it be postponed for more than a brief period of mourning? And why did the rooms which he had seen through the windows wear such a shut-up and dismantled appearance? He found food for speculation during the whole afternoon call, and in his inquisitive way gave his mind to finding out as much as possible about ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... at the Hall occasioned much speculation in that portion of the world to which Waverley-Honour formed the centre: but the more judicious politicians of this microcosm augured yet worse consequences to Richard Waverley from a movement which shortly followed his apostasy. This was no less than an excursion of the Baronet ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... little concerned with Mendelian speculation, have not reported from what stock his family sprang. Scientific curiosity and nationalistic egotism have compelled modern biographers to become anthropologists. Vergil has accordingly been referred, by some critic or other, to each of the several peoples ...
— Vergil - A Biography • Tenney Frank
... a reply he hurried off, and the four Camport chums looked after him with speculation in their eyes until he was lost to view at a turn ...
— Army Boys in the French Trenches • Homer Randall
... ancient "pantheism," after the long reign of a seemingly opposite faith, Bruno unfalteringly asserts "the vision of all things in God" to be the aim of all metaphysical speculation, as of all enquiry into nature. The Spirit of God, in countless variety of forms, neither above, nor in any way without, but intimately within, all things, is really present, with equal integrity and fulness, in the sunbeam ninety millions of miles long, and the wandering ...
— Gaston de Latour: an unfinished romance • Walter Horatio Pater
... rejoicing all through the camp at the return of the lost boys, great rejoicing at the success that seemed sure to come to the plans of Jolly Bill Spencer, and mingled with the rejoicing an underlying vein of excited speculation whether a close search of the cave would not disclose the ancient treasure of bullion or at the very least some booty stored ...
— The Boy Scout Treasure Hunters - The Lost Treasure of Buffalo Hollow • Charles Henry Lerrigo
... destroy the use of practical reason, it possesses a positive and very important value. In order to admit this, we have only to be convinced that there is an absolutely necessary use of pure reason—the moral use—in which it inevitably transcends the limits of sensibility, without the aid of speculation, requiring only to be insured against the effects of a speculation which would involve it in contradiction with itself. To deny the positive advantage of the service which this criticism renders us would be as absurd as to maintain that the system of police is productive of no positive ...
— The Critique of Pure Reason • Immanuel Kant
... bought on speculation, because you ain't lumbermen, and they reckoned they'd buy it from you so as to give you a fine profit on your investment. That's why I asked you what you ...
— Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders in the Great North Woods • Jessie Graham Flower
... "California!" rung through the world, and he caught the echo even on the lonely southwestern prairies. Through incredible hardships he had made his way thither, and a sudden and wonderful fortune had crowned his labors, first in mining and afterward in speculation and merchandising. He said that he was indeed afraid to tell her how rich he was lest to her Arcadean views the sum ...
— Winter Evening Tales • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... still remain some half-dozen old inns, which have preserved their external features unchanged, and which have escaped alike the rage for public improvement and the encroachments of private speculation. Great, rambling queer old places they are, with galleries, and passages, and staircases, wide enough and antiquated enough to furnish materials for a hundred ghost stories, supposing we should ever be reduced to the lamentable necessity of inventing any, and that the world should exist ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... "exploiter."[18] A farm was bought with an idea of its improvement and resale at a good profit, and many farmers moved from one section to another in search of new land which was both fertile and cheap.[19] The era of land speculation has by no means passed, as has been learned to their sorrow by many who bought farms at inflated prices during the World War, and whenever there is a sudden rise in land values, speculation will doubtless recur. ...
— The Farmer and His Community • Dwight Sanderson
... lady George Augustus painted Cornish mines and mining in the most glowing colours, and recommended her to invest in a mine a portion of her surplus funds. The confiding old lady had no taste for speculation, and was rather partial to the three per cent consols, but George Augustus was so charmingly persuasive that she could not help giving in—so George proposed little plans, and opened up little prospects, and the confiding old lady agreed to all the little ...
— Deep Down, a Tale of the Cornish Mines • R.M. Ballantyne
... down into the country to see his aunt and talk things over; for she had brought him up to expect to be her heir; and as she wanted him with her continually, as if he had been her son, she had objected to his taking up any profession. Now that he'd lost his own money in this unfortunate speculation, he felt he ought to do something not to be dependent upon her, his income of two hundred a year having been sunk with the unfloatable motor invention. He meant to ask Miss Paget to lend him enough ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... Wistar Parties in Philadelphia, the Literary Club in Charleston, the recent converzaziones at the houses of President Charles King of Columbia College, and others, and the well-known Saturday Evenings at Miss Lynch's, where literature and art and general speculation have for some seasons had a common center, all illustrate the disposition of an active and cultivated society, not engrossed by special or spasmodic excitements, to cluster by rules of feeling and capacity: and clusters ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Of Literature, Art, and Science - Vol. I., July 22, 1850. No. 4. • Various
... down on some projecting boards to eat my frugal lunch, fully conscious of being an object of much furtive speculation on the part of the two occupants of the deserted house; which, however, fails to strike me as anything extraordinary, since these attentions have long since become an ordinary every-day affair. Not even the sulky and rather ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... fraction of a point how much money he would have made if he had sold short just before the calamity at the very top prices and had covered his stock at the bottom. Had he only known! The atmosphere of the Street, the odor of speculation surrounded him on all sides, enveloped him like a fog, from which the things of the outside world appeared as though seen through a veil. He lived in the district where men do not say "Good-morning" on meeting one another, but "How's the market?" ...
— The Tipster - 1901, From "Wall Street Stories" • Edwin Lefevre
... small and cheap. This has the advantage that when my men can't work, I won't pay much for wasted time. All the same, my risk is obvious. The thing's a rash speculation, on which I can't embark unless you are satisfied to take a ...
— Lister's Great Adventure • Harold Bindloss
... open up most interesting avenues of speculation; many of them were undoubtedly built as defences, some few—such as the small earthwork on the din's edge at Martinhoe—as beacons or signalling stations, and some are conjectured to have been built for burial purposes, ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland
... among his friends, that whereas in former times the professor's nights were centrifugal they have now become centripetal—the Keeling Islands being the great centre towards which he flies. Verkimier is, and probably will always be, a subject of wonder and of profound speculation to the youthful inhabitants of the islands. They don't understand him and he does not understand them. If they were insects he would take deep and intelligent interest in them. As they are merely human beings, he regards them with that peculiar kind of interest with which men regard the unknown ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... conscience, and to banish uncomfortable suggestions. It was the 22nd of December, and the prizes were to be given away on the 23rd. It was not yet known who were to receive them, and, as school work was virtually over, there was a good deal of talk and speculation concerning them. Finishing touches were being given to drawings and maps, desks were being put in order, and books arranged, all in preparation ...
— Ruth Arnold - or, the Country Cousin • Lucy Byerley
... Shawn, who was leaning against the mantel-board. Old Brad, a negro who had been the doctor's servant for many years, sat in a hickory chair near the back door. Brad, aside from taking care of the doctor's office, gave some of his time to preaching, although it was a matter of some speculation as to whether his general habits warranted ...
— Shawn of Skarrow • James Tandy Ellis
... hers, just as it should have been Hannah's. However, his attitude was never any that might be recognized as that of parenthood. He never grew completely accustomed to her presence, she was always a subject of interest and speculation. He continued to get pleasure from her slender graceful being and the little airs of ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... expresses the opinion that even to Eastern minds esoteric speculation presents a danger: "Sufism in the Moslem world, like to its counterpart in Christendom, has, in its practical effect, been productive of many mischievous results. In perfectly well-attuned minds mysticism takes the form of a noble type of idealistic philosophy; but ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... much obliterated and decayed, but very curious. As usually happens in almost any collection of paintings, of any sort, in Italy, where there are many heads, there is, in one of them, a striking accidental likeness of Napoleon. At one time, I used to please my fancy with the speculation whether these old painters, at their work, had a foreboding knowledge of the man who would one day arise to wreak such destruction upon art: whose soldiers would make targets of great pictures, and ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... Brezacs; he sailed with a fair wind and well freighted over the ocean of commerce,—his intense business interest keeping him in the still, though half-intoxicated, frenzy of gamblers watching events on the green table of speculation. ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac
... adequate machinery of transport. We can scarcely realise the inconveniences, costs, and risks entailed by the more distant branches of foreign trade at a time when the captain of a merchant-ship still freighted his vessel at his own expense, and when each voyage was a separate speculation. Even in the early nineteenth century the manufacturer commonly shipped his surplus produce at his own risk, employing the merchant upon commission, and in the trade with the Indies, China, or South America he had frequently to lie out of his money or his return freight of indigo, coffee, tea, ...
— The Evolution of Modern Capitalism - A Study of Machine Production • John Atkinson Hobson
... preferential but sceptical solution of the Buddhists; and, in a large view, I believe it would be difficult to indicate any further essential difference between their theoretic systems, both, as I conceive, the unquestionable growth of the Indian soil, and both founded upon transcendental speculation, conducted in the very same style and manner."—The ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... little mention of his name for the Presidency. His friends at home had apparently hoped to nominate him for Vice-President on the ticket with Mr. Seward. But as the proofs of hostility to Seward multiplied, speculation was busy as to the man who could be taken in his stead. At the moment when doubts of Seward's success were most prevalent, and when excitement in regard to the nomination was deepest, the Republicans of ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... both sides, but likely to be an enduring tie because it represented, to both partners, their last chance of escape from social extinction. That Hermione's marriage was a mere stake in their game did not in the least affect Garnett's view of its urgency. If on their part it was a sordid speculation, to her it had the freshness of the first wooing. If it made of her a mere pawn in their hands, it would put her, so Garnett hoped, beyond farther risk of such base uses; and to achieve this had ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... to squat with knees bent chinward, and then there are bulging spaces between the buttons of the coat Seas, leaping joyfully clear of the weather bow, came plump into his lap. It became a subject of interesting speculation whether there was a square inch of his body left ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham
... this 'prentice lad of seventeen years had already made himself "a little obnoxious to the governing party," so as to fear that he might soon "bring himself into scrapes." For the inherited habit of freedom in religious speculation had taken a new form in Franklin, who was already a free-thinker, and by his "indiscreet disputations about religion" had come to be "pointed at with horror by good people as an infidel and atheist"—compromising, even perilous, names to bear in that Puritan village. ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... what is termed gentility, I found darker and deeper themes for speculation. I saw Jew pedlars, with hawk eyes flashing from countenances whose every other feature wore only an expression of abject humility; sturdy professional street beggars scowling upon mendicants of a better stamp, whom despair alone had driven ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... stood in his eye as he wrung my hand, and said in a husky voice, "You know all about it, my dear boy; you'll do well, and we shall have you back here, hearty and strong, with information successfully to guide Garrard, Janrin and Company in many an important speculation; and, moreover, I hope, to lay the foundation of your own fortune. Good-bye, good-bye; heaven ...
— James Braithwaite, the Supercargo - The Story of his Adventures Ashore and Afloat • W.H.G. Kingston
... Suburbs?" answers Daun: "In the name of civilized humanity, you will never think of such thing!" "That will I, your Excellenz, of a surety, and do it!" answers Schmettau. So that Dresden is full of pity, terror and speculation. The common rumor is, says Excellency Mitchell, who is sojourning there for the present, "That Bruhl [nefarious Bruhl, born to be the death of us!] has persuaded Polish Majesty to sanction this ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle
... Nevertheless, it was impossible, on either of these obvious bases, to account for the fact of something withheld in the stranger's manner, some secret exultant knowledge of the phenomenon which baffled the mountaineer's speculation. Hite, all unaware that in his impulsive speech he had disclosed the fact of his hazardous occupation, began to feel that, considering his liability to the Federal law for making brush whiskey, he had ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... ability of manipulating the thoughts of others. Fond of paradox he doubtless was, but he had a way of putting things that arrested attention and excited thought. It was, perhaps, this very sensibility of the surrounding atmosphere of feeling and speculation, which made Rousseau more directly influential on contemporary thought (or perhaps we should say sentiment) than any writer of his time. And this is rarely consistent with enduring greatness in literature. It forces us to remember, against our will, the oratorical character ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... of that sort of ignorance is a deathblow to confidence, not only in some special utterance, but in the teacher, for it strikes at his claim not to knowledge so much as to wisdom, to balance and insight of thought. I venture to say that recent drifts of speculation shew how rapidly the conception of a fallible Christ developes towards that of a wholly imperfect and untrustworthy Christ. And, looking again at the vast phenomenon of the Portrait in the Gospels, I hold that the line of thought which offers by very far the least difficulty, ...
— Messages from the Epistle to the Hebrews • Handley C.G. Moule
... he is come here to buy," said the baron to himself. "This Wohlfart has told his friend that there is a bargain to be made in this quarter. The speculation is beginning; ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... the new-found shrine, and mechanically took up a book, like one who watches by a sick-bed. But his eyes gathered no thoughts from the page before him. His intellect had been stunned by the bold contradiction, to its face, of all its experience, and now lay passive, without assertion, or speculation, or even conscious astonishment; while his imagination sent one wild dream of blessedness after another coursing through his soul. How long he sat he knew not; but at length he roused himself, rose, and, trembling in every portion of his frame, looked again into the mirror. She was gone. ...
— Phantastes - A Faerie Romance for Men and Women • George MacDonald
... which it is to be read must of course be determined before any progress can be made in deciphering it. This was, until recently, a matter of speculation, but now may be considered settled. As this has been explained[345-1] it is unnecessary ...
— Aids to the Study of the Maya Codices • Cyrus Thomas
... before S. Paul visited that city in A.D. 61;—seeing, too, that it was in A.D. 61-2 (as Wordsworth and Alford are agreed) that S. Paul wrote his Epistle to the Colossians, and wrote it from Rome;—I really can discover nothing unreasonable in the speculation. If, however, it be well founded,—(and it is impossible to deny that the coincidence of expression may be such as I have suggested,)—then, what an august corroboration would this be of "the last Twelve Verses ...
— The Last Twelve Verses of the Gospel According to S. Mark • John Burgon
... accordingly, and, after exhausting the regions of conjecture, the powers of speculation, and the realms of fancy, Mark and ...
— The Fugitives - The Tyrant Queen of Madagascar • R.M. Ballantyne
... of vegetables was now a part of the daily occupation of some in the colony, as the garden had not yet advanced to that stage where anything could be gotten from it. One morning John was missing, and there was a great deal of speculation as to ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: The Mysteries of the Caverns • Roger Thompson Finlay
... their careers with deep interest. To me their operations seemed simply a species of gambling. I did not then know that the credit of all these men or firms was seriously impaired by the knowledge (which it is almost impossible to conceal) that they were given to speculation. But the firms were then so few that I could have counted them on the fingers of one hand. The Oil and Stock Exchanges in Pittsburgh had not as yet been founded and brokers' offices with wires in connection with the stock exchanges of ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie • Andrew Carnegie
... of the Church. Christianity was then but the religion of the humble and the poor, a form of democracy, of socialism struggling against Roman society. And when the latter toppled over, rotted by money, it succumbed far more beneath the results of frantic speculation, swindling banks, and financial disasters, than beneath the onslaught of barbarian hordes and the stealthy, termite-like working ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... to memory the name of every bone and artery in the body, yet all that related to a woman's special organs and chief natural function was studiously ignored. The subject being thus chastely shrouded in mystery, they were thrown back on guesswork and speculation—with the quaintest results. The fancies woven by quite big girls, for instance, round the physical feat of bringing a child into the world, would have supplied material for a volume of fairytales. On many a summer evening at this time, in a ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... child? Not so. He left that poor old grandmother to struggle with her failing strength, not only to bear her own burden, but the one he had so wickedly imposed upon her. He had left A.P. before Lucy's death and gone to the Pacific coast where he became wealthy through liquor selling, speculation, gambling and other disreputable means, and returned with gold enough to hide a multitude of sins, and then fair women permitted and even courted his society. Mothers with marriageable daughters condoned his offences against morality and said, "oh, well, young men will sow their wild oats; it is ...
— Trial and Triumph • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
... Verr. v. 18, 45) mentions only the enactment as to the sea-going vessels; but Asconius (in Or. in toga cand. p. 94, Orell.) and Dio. (lv. 10, 5) state that the senator was also forbidden by law to undertake state-contracts (-redemptiones-); and, as according to Livy "all speculation was considered unseemly for a senator," the Claudian law probably reached ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... at short intervals from $30 to $18, and $12, a barrel, it is evident that speculation must be rife, and also that only general statements can be made as to conditions ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan |
