"Contemplate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... when he took up his pen in the evening was surprised by the appearance of the morning. Buffon once described these delicious moments with his accustomed eloquence:—"Invention depends on patience; contemplate your subject long; it will gradually unfold, till a sort of electric spark convulses for a moment the brain, and spreads down to the very heart a glow of irritation. Then come the luxuries of genius! the true hours for production and composition; hours so delightful, that ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... in land cases, have been referred to. They indicate, perhaps, to some extent the ingredients that aggravated the terrible scenes we are preparing to contemplate. They served to keep up the general intelligence of the community through a period necessarily destitute of such means of information as we enjoy. Attendance upon courts of law, serving on juries, having to give testimony at trials, ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... disgrace to certain intercepted letters which injured me in the eyes of the First Consul. I did not know this at the time, and though I was pretty well aware of the machinations of Bonaparte's adulators, almost all of whom were my enemies, yet I did not contemplate such an act of baseness. But a spontaneous letter from M. de Barbe Marbois at length opened my eyes, and left little doubt on the subject. The following is the postscript ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... divers manners. Wise poets, by words, make the beautiful-winged manifold, though he is One" ("Rig-Veda," B.C. 1500, from "Anthology," p.76). "The Divine Mind alone is the whole assemblage of the gods.... He (the Brahmin) may contemplate castle, air, fire, water, the subtile ether, in his own body and organs; in his heart, the Star; in his motion, Vishnu; in his vigour, Hara; in his speech, Agni; in digestion, Mitra; in production, Brahma; but he must consider the supreme Omnipresent ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant
... of Socialism do not contemplate making the State the sole employer; it is chiefly in transport, mining, fisheries, forestry, the cultivation of the food staples, and the manufacture of a few such articles as bricks and steel, and possibly in housing in what one might call the ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... actual words, to go to your assistance to the amount of so many millions; and he, the man who professes to love me, whom I have thought I loved—he has, as bluntly, replied—oh, it is too terrible to contemplate!—he has told you that if I will hasten my decision, if I will give my consent at once to the wedding he proposes, he will supply the cash you need. You offer your daughter, as security for the loan; ...
— The Last Woman • Ross Beeckman
... fondly worshipped,—it would be impossible for me to peruse the meagre accounts given in the New Testament of this so prominent an object of Catholic reverence and worship,—to read the brief, frigid, not to say harsh speeches of Christ,—to contemplate the stolidity of the Apostles with regard to her, throughout their Epistles,—never even mentioning her name,—I say it would be impossible for me to read all this without having the idea suggested that it was never intended that ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... worked mightily, and the very sign of its working was, as a matter of course, unreasonableness, insubordination, untrustworthiness. This result might have been foreseen, and probably was foreseen. It was not a pleasant thing to contemplate, nor is it pleasant to read of, but it proved nothing as to the powers and possibilities of the negro people. It is not probable that any of the "missionaries," however discouraged, came to think that the black man was too stupid or too dishonest ...
— Letters from Port Royal - Written at the Time of the Civil War (1862-1868) • Various
... person. Against the influence of Philip's presence, and the effect of his having so imperilled himself to see her, she had to arm herself with coldness, or look upon the success of her project as going for naught to her advantage. She dared not contemplate the forfeit; ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... practice in strange neighbourhoods, and spend all their income in starving their one horse, but a man of substance, able to keep an extravagant table like the best of his patients. Time out of mind the Raveloe doctor had been a Kimble; Kimble was inherently a doctor's name; and it was difficult to contemplate firmly the melancholy fact that the actual Kimble had no son, so that his practice might one day be handed over to a successor with the incongruous name of Taylor or Johnson. But in that case the wiser people in Raveloe would employ Dr. ...
— Silas Marner - The Weaver of Raveloe • George Eliot
... agreed to that. But to shoot down from ambush these boys, who had come up here many of them probably thinking they were coming to a sort of picnic or outing in the September woods, was a thing which he could not contemplate. Before he would attack them these boys must know just what they were ...
— The Shepherd of the North • Richard Aumerle Maher
... and have an incomprehensibly naive way of going to impossible places and doing impossible things by way of enjoyment. Our fair friend there, for instance, has probably been round the world upon several occasions, and is familiar with a number of places and objects of note fearful to contemplate. They came here as tourists, and became fascinated with European life. The most overwhelming punishment which could be inflicted upon that excellent woman, the mother, would be that she should be compelled to return to her New York, or Philadelphia, ...
— "Le Monsieur De La Petite Dame" • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... Los Angeles, even without a bootlegger's load, was not a matter which Casey liked to contemplate. He would have to face the Little Woman if he went back; either as a deliberate liar, who lied to his wife to gain the freedom he might have had without resorting to deceit, or as the victim once more of crooks. Casey thought he would prefer the accusation of lying ...
— The Trail of the White Mule • B. M. Bower
... limit to the indefinite division of labour is to be found in the social, intellectual, and moral objections to specialization. It is not pleasant to contemplate England as one vast factory, an enlarged Manchester, manufacturing in semi-darkness, continual uproar, and at intense pressure for the rest of the world. Nor would the Continent of America, divided into square, numbered fields, and cultivated from ...
— The Unity of Civilization • Various
... Poet's birthday is not, at first sight, entirely obvious, and that another gentleman, with equal appropriateness, favoured the company with "The Death of Nelson," on the trombone, seems certainly to give you a warrant for the introduction you contemplate making, in commemoration of Sir WALTER, of the Chinese Chopstick Mazurka, and the Woora-woora Cannibal Islanders side-knife and sledge-hammer war-dance. It may of course be possible, in a remote way, to introduce ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, February 8, 1890 • Various
... keep their beauty much later and longer." This fact stares one in the face in every company; one meets ladies past fifty, glowing, radiant, and blooming, with a freshness of complexion and fulness of outline refreshing to contemplate. What can be the reason? Tell us, Muses and Graces, what can it be? Is it the conservative power of sea fogs and coal smoke—the same cause that keeps the turf green, and makes the holly and ivy flourish? How comes it that our married ladies dwindle, fade, and grow thin—that ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... sizes, although at least a third of the book in Borrow's very neat handwriting is contained in a leather notebook, of which I give examples of the title-page and opening leaf in facsimile. The title-page demonstrates the earliest form of Borrow's conception. Not only did he then contemplate an undisguised autobiography, but even described himself, as he frequently did in his conversation, as 'a Norfolk man.' Before the book was finished, however, he repudiated the autobiographical note, and by the time he sat down to write The Romany Rye we find him fiercely ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... materials of which these volumes are composed, will hardly be conceived by those who read them with careless facility[60]. The stretch of mind and prompt assiduity by which so many conversations were preserved[61], I myself, at some distance of time, contemplate with wonder; and I must be allowed to suggest, that the nature of the work, in other respects, as it consists of innumerable detached particulars, all which, even the most minute, I have spared no pains to ascertain with a scrupulous ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... he had to put on more wraps. His terror took possession of him: he was forced to contemplate the most awful possibilities—to picture to himself what ...
— Absalom's Hair • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... that you have promised to introduce "Pullman Palace Restaurant Cars, with free lunches," on the Tram-lines? If so, do you contemplate providing the cost out of your own resources, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, November 7, 1891 • Various
... eyes. He regarded him as a damaged piece of clockwork, which it would be creditable to his skill to set agoing again. Graves and young MacTurk—Moore's sole other visitors—contemplated him in the light in which they were wont to contemplate the occupant for the time being of the dissecting-room ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... another woman, of far different type, and without rank or riches, was scheming for her friends, and nursing the germs of the philosophic party in one of the most notable salons of the first half of the century. Mme. de Tencin is not an interesting figure to contemplate from a moral standpoint. "She was born with the most fascinating qualities and the most abominable defects that God ever gave to one of his creatures," said Mme. du Deffand, who was far from being able to pose, herself, ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... should before long be a post-captain, when he should be her father's equal in rank. Alice was not very much surprised nor agitated, because she was before sure that he loved her. Still it was very pleasant to hear him say so. Pearce also felt supremely happy, and did not for a moment contemplate the clouds and storms which might be ahead. Alice herself might possibly have seen difficulties which he did not. She loved her father, but she knew that he was a proud man and weak on certain points, and that few men thought more of family and connections. It had always surprised ...
— The Grateful Indian - And other Stories • W.H.G. Kingston
... coincidence of circumstances and wonderful combination of causes which gradually prepared the people of this country for independence; when we contemplate the rise, progress, and termination of the late war, which gave them a name among the nations of the earth, we are with you unavoidably led to acknowledge and adore the Great Arbiter of the Universe, by whom empires rise and fall. A review of the many signal ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 4) of Volume 1: George Washington • James D. Richardson
... look at the prospect of nature before his eyes, but to contemplate the prospect of the future in his imagination, that he sat there, ...
— Her Mother's Secret • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... her will to keep them stern and calm. After periods like this she painted diligently, without raising her head, for he was there, near her, watching her work. The first time he sat down beside her to contemplate her silently, she said, in a voice of some ...
— Vendetta • Honore de Balzac
... harassed her soul. There can be no reasonable doubt that she was harassed as all over-conscientious people are—with the fear and consciousness that her duties were not half done. How few of this class ever contemplate themselves or their works with anything like satisfaction! A short extract from her journal penned during the first years of her wedded life affords the key to this self-examination, a self-examination which was strictly continued as long as reason held her ...
— Elizabeth Fry • Mrs. E. R. Pitman
... those whose aspirations are after a state of society from which evil shall be banished, and who look in life for that which life will never afford, contemplate that all the offices of life may be performed without contempt or degradation—all be regarded as equally liberal, or equally respected.[238] But theorists cannot control nature and bend her to their views, and the inequality of which I have before spoken is deeply founded ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... apt to think. The evildoer, unfortunately for our sense of righteousness in prosecuting him, is not always one who has unmixed evil instincts, and nearly every contingency of human conduct becomes, as we contemplate it, many-sided enough to be very confusing. And it was beginning to dawn upon Rendel that, although it may fulfil the ends of abstract justice that the guilty should be exposed and the innocent acquitted, such an act takes an ugly aspect ...
— The Arbiter - A Novel • Lady F. E. E. Bell
... pause an instant to contemplate the scene of destruction. He saw only the helpless persons struggling for life in the water, and he renewed his labors with a vigor and skill which soon brought him to the sufferers. Mr. Sherwood was supporting his wife; ...
— Haste and Waste • Oliver Optic
... afterwards). But I find it impossible to imagine Cecil Chesterton, like the bridesmaid on the honeymoon, receiving and passing on such a story as that of Gilbert "quivering with self-reproach" so that after the first night he "dared not even contemplate a repetition. . . . Gilbert, young and vital, was condemned to a pseudo-monastic life, in which he lived with a woman but ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... contemplate the image conveyed in the two last verses, without those emotions of terror it was intended to excite. It has, moreover, the entire advantage of novelty to recommend it; for there is too much originality in all the circumstances, to suppose that the author had in ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins
... goes on. One cannot make the best of such impossibilities, and the question is doubly fatuous until we are told which of our two lives—the conscious or the unconscious—is held by the asker to be the truer life. Which does the question contemplate—the life we know, or the life which others may know, but ...
— Essays on Life, Art and Science • Samuel Butler
... Palestine led indirectly to the ruin of the order of the Templars. The record is one of the dark episodes of history, encompassed with contradictions, full of surprises, painful to contemplate, whatever view may be ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... essentially the same) becomes in turn a witness to his veracity. He was born in the midst of nature that, through all the changes of things, has never lost its sunny charm. The existence he loved best to contemplate, that of southern shepherds, fishermen, rural people, remains what it always has been in Sicily and in the isles of Greece. The habits and the passions of his countryfolk have not altered, the echoes ...
— Theocritus, Bion and Moschus rendered into English Prose • Andrew Lang
... I'm afraid," declared Reckitt meaningly. "You must think we're blunderers, if you contemplate that!" and he ...
— Hushed Up - A Mystery of London • William Le Queux
... of our condition fully dawned upon us. When we were first robbed, we were only a short distance from Santa Fe, where our money easily procured other stock; now there were three hundred miles behind us to that place, and the picture was anything but pleasant to contemplate. To transport supplies for thirty-five men seemed impossible. Our money was now a burden greater than we could bear; what was to be done with it? We would have no use for it on our way to the settlements, ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... one of the hard wooden chairs, but now she rose and went nearer the birds, standing before them in great admiration. Slowly then she went from one thing in the room to another, pausing to contemplate each. A beautiful white owl, very large and admirably mounted, held her ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner
... my powers so justly inspire. A rising nation, spread over a wide and fruitful land, traversing all the seas with the rich productions of their industry, engaged in commerce with nations who feel power and forget right, advancing rapidly to destinies beyond the reach of mortal eye—when I contemplate these transcendent objects, and see the honor, the happiness, and the hopes of this beloved country committed to the issue, and the auspices of this day, I shrink from the contemplation, and humble ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... ammunition, but, unchaining the victim, would kill him by a blow on the back of the neck with a mallet or a piece of wood, and leave his body where it lay, to feed the vultures. Often young girls, and even infants, were marched through deserts, through which Gordon declared that he shuddered to contemplate a journey on his fleet-footed camel. It was with ...
— General Gordon - A Christian Hero • Seton Churchill
... occasion we have no hurried glimpse of the mountain. We have ample time to contemplate it, looking at it, turning away from it to rest our souls from so deep an emotion, looking at it again, time after time, till we have entered into its spirit and its spirit has entered into us. And always our eyes insensibly revert to the culminating-point—the ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband
... this point of view contemplate the following series of chemical elements, which is a representation of ...
— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs
... Mercer. He was known to have several relations and friends in America who had sided with the rebels, and though this made him look on them with a favourable eye, he had too loyal a spirit to allow him to contemplate for a moment the desertion of his colours. Still his heart often yearned towards those engaged in what then appeared so unequal a struggle on shore, and he could scarcely help expressing satisfaction at any success they met with. Poor Mercer had to endure a great deal of irony and abuse ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... grass and shrubs were so beaten down as to present the appearance of an army having passed that way, and the river was full up to its banks. Having seen the fall in the nearest of the two arms, I descended below their junction, to contemplate the cascade they formed when united, down the precipice of 120 feet; the noise of the fall was such that my own voice was scarcely audible, but a thick mist which rose up to the clouds from the abyss, admitted of a white foam ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis Volume 2 • Matthew Flinders
... things I want to talk over with you. It's a very solemn responsibility, getting married: you have to take upon yourself the duty of raising up future citizens for the state; and with our present knowledge of how nature works through the laws of heredity, you have to think whether you two who contemplate marriage are well fitted to act as parents to the generations that are to be. When I remember that all my own faults and failings may be handed on relentlessly to those that come after us—built up ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... think it would be more humane to destroy all traces of the experiments by which you discovered this substance, and to divulge the secret to no one? The devastation such a thing would cause, if it fell into unscrupulous hands, is too appalling even to contemplate." ...
— The Face And The Mask • Robert Barr
... gods. The people had no right of direct intercourse with the deities. They needed a mediator, who, partaking of both human and divine nature, was qualified to communicate with both. The king alone, Son of the Sun, was of sufficiently high descent to contemplate the god in his temple, to serve him, and to speak with him face to face. Sacrifices could be offered only by him, or through him, and in his name. Even the customary offerings to the dead were supposed to pass through his hands, and the family availed themselves of his name ...
— Manual Of Egyptian Archaeology And Guide To The Study Of Antiquities In Egypt • Gaston Camille Charles Maspero
... and looking still further about me in the world I chose Iceland for my destination, because I hoped there to find Nature in a garb such as she wears nowhere else. I feel so completely happy, so brought into communion with my Maker, when I contemplate sublime natural phenomena, that in my eyes no degree of toil or difficulty is too great a price at which to purchase such ...
— Visit to Iceland - and the Scandinavian North • Ida Pfeiffer
... they; or more famous, or more fortunate—so they think; and they become envious. You have not reached the period of such empty vanity, and I have long passed it. Let us, therefore, make our mutual vows not to be disturbed by the good luck or the good graces of others, but to continue, instead, to contemplate the contented cat on the rug and the unenvious sky that hangs over ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick
... contented and happy feeder upon the manna and wine of those early wanderings and preachings among a simple and primitive people; and was forever lingering away from Jerusalem, and avoiding the final catastrophe, which he could never contemplate without shuddering horror. No power on earth could ever convert his simple faith to the idea that this great sacrifice was an ill-devised scheme to end in final failure; and he preached accordingly. The elder Ridgeley ...
— Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle
... falsehoods imposed on them during their childhood, because they are not good and wise enough to contemplate the past in the present, and so to produce that continuity in their self-consciousness, which Nature has made the law of their animal life. Men are ungrateful to others, only when they have ceased to look back on their former selves with joy and ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth
... territory which after investigation we have determined of right belongs to Venezuela. In making these recommendations I am fully alive to the responsibility incurred, and keenly realize all the consequences that may follow. I am nevertheless firm in my conviction that while it is a grievous thing to contemplate the two great English-speaking peoples ... as being otherwise than friendly ... there is no calamity ... which equals that which follows a supine submission ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... Apavarga, O ruler of the Mithilas, all the senses should be fixed upon the mind. The mind should then be fixed on Consciousness, O king, Consciousness should next be fixed on intelligence or Buddhi, and Buddhi, should then be fixed on Prakriti. Thus merging these one after another, Yogins contemplate the Supreme Soul which is One, which is freed from Rajas, which is stainless, which is Immutable and Infinite and Pure and without defect, who is Eternal Purusha, who is unchangeable, who is Indivisible, who is without decay and death, who is everlasting, who transcends diminution, and which ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... for a mere scribbler to intrude upon the chaste mysteries of the toilet. Suffice it therefore to say that, when all was completed, George Anne and Mrs. March the dresser stood back, breathless, to contemplate ...
— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington
... instance. Many of the most wretched blew out their brains in despair; and there was in this act, the last which nature suggests as an end to misery, a resignation and coolness which makes one shudder to contemplate. Those who thus put an end to their lives cared less for death than they did to put an end to their insupportable sufferings, and I witnessed during the whole of this disastrous campaign what vain things are physical strength and human courage when the moral strength springing from a determined ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... time for hesitation; the exhausted lad dare not contemplate the gap, lest his courage fail him, and nerving himself for an effort, he leaped. Striking the edge on the other side, he plunged forward as Lisle dragged at the coat, and then rolled over in the snow. He was up in a moment, gasping hard, almost ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss
... risen from the dead to confront him, Demorest only saw the man he had unconsciously wronged—the man who had it in his power to claim Joan and exact a terrible retribution! But it was part of this monstrous and irreconcilable situation that Blandford had ceased to contemplate it, and in his preoccupation only saw the actual interference of a man whom he no longer hated, but had ...
— The Argonauts of North Liberty • Bret Harte
... the waves, Shuffles was appalled at his own act; for even he had not sunk so low as to contemplate murder. The deed was not premeditated. It was done on the spur of angry excitement, which dethroned his reason. The chief conspirator had so often and so lightly used the language of the League, about "falling overboard accidentally," that he had become familiar with the idea; and, perhaps, ...
— Outward Bound - Or, Young America Afloat • Oliver Optic
... most crooked streets, on bridges and under the arches of tall palaces, in the most frequented places and the most deserted. She went sometimes slowly, sometimes fast, without appearing to notice the crowd or the solitude, but never stopping. She seemed to contemplate with passionate curiosity the houses, the monuments, the canals, and even the sky above the city, and to breathe with delight the air which circulated through it. When she met a friendly person, she signed to him to follow her, and soon disappeared with him. More than once she has ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... whole earth.—But from what point of view can the omnipresent Lord be said to occupy a limited space and to be minute?—He may, we reply, be spoken of thus, 'because he is to be contemplated thus.' The passage under discussion teaches us to contemplate the Lord as abiding within the lotus of the heart, characterised by minuteness and similar qualities—which apprehension of the Lord is rendered possible through a modification of the mind—just as Hari is contemplated in the sacred stone called /S/alagram. Although present everywhere, the ...
— The Vedanta-Sutras with the Commentary by Sankaracarya - Sacred Books of the East, Volume 1 • George Thibaut
... perhaps presumptuous in troubling you to read this. But cannot let slip an opportunity of addressing you with what I wish you to know even when you have arrived at your native country, and may contemplate on a subject which I hope will not displease you, and I will thank Heaven I have it in my power to let one amongst the people called Quakers[2] see, written by the hand of an African, the sentiments of his soul. I mean only to trouble you with ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various
... rivulets. For the drama, society was altogether a state of chaos, out of which it was, for a while at least, to proceed anew, as if there had been none before it. And yet it is not undelightful to contemplate the education of good from evil. The ignorance of the great mass of our countrymen was the efficient cause of the reproduction of the drama; and the preceding darkness and the returning light were alike necessary in order to the creation ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... Serving others is serving myself. I must absolve me to myself.' And what is myself? Let Fichte answer. 'I affirm that in what we call the knowledge or the contemplation of things, it is always ourselves that we know or contemplate: in every sentiment of consciousness it is only modifications of ourselves that we feel.' And again: 'The universe lives. From it arises a marvelous harmony that resounds deliciously in the very depths of my heart. I live in all that surrounds me. I recognize myself ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... man, and probably one of the most undressed men that ever was. I ask you to put yourselves in his place. I ask it as a favor; I ask it as a tardy act of justice; I ask it in the interest of fidelity to the traditions of your ancestors; I ask it that the world may contemplate, with vision unobstructed by disguising swallow-tails and white cravats, the spectacle which the true New England Society ought to present. Cease to come to these annual orgies in this hollow modern mockery—the surplusage of raiment. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... be found upon a nearer view that they who extol the happiness of poverty do not mean the same state with those who deplore its miseries. Poets have their imaginations filled with ideas of magnificence; and being accustomed to contemplate the downfall of empires, or to contrive forms of lamentation for monarchs in distress, rank all the classes of mankind in a state of poverty who make no approaches to the dignity of crowns. To be poor, in the epick language, is only not to ...
— Dr. Johnson and His Circle • John Bailey
... it to intrude at all. For example, consider this figure, which he used in the village "Address" referred to with such candid complacency in the title-page above quoted—"like the topmost topaz of an ancient tower." Please read it again; contemplate it; measure it; walk around it; climb up it; try to get at an approximate realization of the size of it. Is the fellow to that to be found in literature, ancient or modern, foreign or domestic, living or dead, drunk or sober? One notices how fine and grand it sounds. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... splendid and imperial a manner did the English people, properly so called, first take place among the nations of the world. Yet while we contemplate with pleasure the high and commanding qualities which our forefathers displayed, we cannot but admit that the end which they pursued was an end condemned both by humanity and by enlightened policy, and that the reverses which compelled them, after a long and bloody struggle, to relinquish ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the palace, and after this went frequently to the window to contemplate and admire the wonderful palace of ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten
... Sorry, answering for them both, and they went out, giving Swan a sidelong look of utter bafflement as they passed him. Talking by the thought route from Spirit Canyon to Boise City was evidently a bit too much for even their phlegmatic souls to contemplate with perfect calm. ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower
... stand there for ever looking at her, pleasant as it might be to him to contemplate the lovely face; so he made a little movement at last, and came a few steps nearer to ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... running its course free and unfettered until it fell rather by natural decay than before the weapon of a new belief. The Greeks were Atheists before they became Christian. Their faith had passed through every stage. We can contemplate it as it springs out of the dim misshapen symbol, during that phase when men's eyes are fixed more on meaning and reality than on beauty and form, we can mark how it gradually looks more to symmetry and shape, how ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent
... be surely fixed until to-morrow. What a useless loss of time over such things! Why this deep grief when Necessity decides?—can our love exist without sacrifices, and by refraining from desiring all things? Can you alter the fact that you are not wholly mine, nor I wholly yours? Ah, God! contemplate the beauties of Nature, and reconcile your spirit to the inevitable. Love demands all, and rightly; so it is with me toward you and with you toward me; but you forget so easily that I must live both for you and ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes
... Epinogris, and Sir Hector de Maris: then Earl Damas of Listenise smote like a whirlwind, and Jurgen slid contentedly down the tail of his fine horse. His part in the tournament was ended, and he was heartily glad of it. He preferred to contemplate rather than share in such festivities: and he now followed his bent with a most exquisite misery, because he considered that never had any other poet occupied a situation ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... say that we contemplate with equal satisfaction that fervent and constant zeal for religion which, according to M. Hippolyte Carnot, distinguished Barere; for, as we think that whatever brings dishonour on religion is a serious evil, we had, we own, indulged a hope that Barere was an atheist. ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... sinecures. Wren retired to his house at Hampton Court, and there sought consolation in philosophical and religious studies. Once a year, says Horace Walpole, the good old man was carried to St. Paul's, to contemplate the glorious chef-d'oeuvre of his genius. Steele, in the Tatler, refers to Wren's vexations, and attributes them to his ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... nor man to be adored: his last temptation caught him in the season before he had subdued his blood, and amid the multitudinously simple of this world, stamped him a tragic comedian: that is, a grand pretender, a self-deceiver, one of the lividly ludicrous, whom we cannot laugh at, but must contemplate, to distinguish where their character strikes the note of discord with life; for otherwise, in the reflection of their history, life will seem a thing demoniacally inclined by fits to antic and dive into gulfs. The characters of the hosts of men are of the simple order ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... all, these social relations which call for so much courage, and which can create so much suffering to most of us as we conquer for them our awkwardness and our shyness? Let us pause for a moment, and try to be just. Let us contemplate these social ethics, which call for so much that is, perhaps, artificial and troublesome and contradictory. Society, so long as it is the congregation of the good, the witty, the bright, the intelligent, and the gifted, is the thing most necessary to us all. We ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... which Nature seemed to have bestowed upon her only to aggrandize pleasure and convert the most vulgar delights into endless poems. "After——" she repeated. Her eyes took a fixed stare; she seemed to contemplate a threatening ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... imaginative factor—-which corresponds with what Fechner calls the "indirect''—-includes all that imaginative activity adds to our enjoyment when we contemplate an aesthetic object. It may consist first of all in recalling concrete experiences firmly associated with the object, as when the sight of wild-flowers in a London street calls up an image of fields and lanes. In order that these images may add to the aesthetic value of the object they must correspond ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... perplexity when the bed of justice was broken up. He began to recollect that Mr Wentworth's explanation on the previous night had convinced him of his innocence, and to see that it was indeed altogether inconceivable that the Curate should be guilty; but then, other matters still more disagreeable to contemplate than Mr Wentworth's guilt came in to darken the picture. This vagabond Wodehouse, whom the Curate had taken in at his sister's request—what was the meaning of that mystery? Mr Proctor had never been anyhow connected with mysteries; he was himself an only ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... it was to me to contemplate this sacred edifice, yet we were anxious not to lose time in reaching the valleys, so we left by the afternoon train for Pinerolo, a town of ominous memories as regards its past connection with its Protestant neighbours. Missionaries, monks, and soldiers ...
— The Vaudois of Piedmont - A Visit to their Valleys • John Napper Worsfold
... variety. The second applies to those inevitable times of weariness which attack the most interested and well-stocked story-teller. You are, perhaps, tired out physically. You have told a certain story till it seems as if a repetition of it must produce bodily effects dire to contemplate, yet that happens to be the very story you must tell. What can you do? I answer, "Make believe." The device seems incongruous with the repeated warnings against pretence; but it is necessary, and it is wise. Pretend as hard as ever ...
— How to Tell Stories to Children - And Some Stories to Tell • Sara Cone Bryant
... could not avoid stopping five minutes—yes, reader, and it is a lesson to human pomp—I could wait but five minutes to contemplate the gate through which had passed thirty-four successive Archbishops of Canterbury, from Anselm, in the time of William the Norman, to Warham and Cranmer, the pliant tools of the tyrant Tudor. As leaders of the ...
— A Morning's Walk from London to Kew • Richard Phillips
... town-meetings. It is easy to keep out of the way of the contribution box and to let the subscription paper go by us to the next door. The common duties of life and the good offices society asks of us may be left to take care of themselves while we contemplate the infinite. There is no safer fortress for indolence than "the Everlasting No." The chimney-corner is the true arena for this class of philosophers, and the pipe and mug furnish their all-sufficient panoply. Emerson undoubtedly ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... A material part of the volume is composed of such matter. I cannot congratulate him on the spirit which he has displayed. Personally I am profoundly indifferent to such attempts at detraction, and it is with heretical amusement that I contemplate the large part which purely individual and irrelevant criticism is made to play in stuffing out the proportions of orthodox argument. In the first moment of irritation, I can well understand that hard hitting, even below the belt, might be indulged in against my work by an exasperated ...
— A Reply to Dr. Lightfoot's Essays • Walter R. Cassels
... go out to rodeo work; indeed, he was anxious to go. But, not being a morbid young man, he did not contemplate carrying a broken heart with him. Teresita was sweet and winsome and maddeningly alluring; he knew it, he felt it still. Indeed, he was made to realize it every time the whim seized her to punish Jack by smiling upon Dade. But she was as capricious as beauty usually is, and he knew that ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... there. Had the Seventh Infantry been maintained at even the minimum strength of an efficient regiment, the six companies engaged would have been sufficient to accomplish the complete overthrow of the enemy. It is painful to contemplate the famous Seventh Infantry, a regiment whose history is interwoven with that of the country from the battle of New Orleans to the present hour, so attenuated that with more than half of its companies present it could take into action ...
— The Battle of the Big Hole • G. O. Shields
... and I'll rub it. Oh, shut up! I've rubbed more knees than—than a centipede ever saw! Besides, it won't do to have you laid up, Clint, old scout. Think of what it would mean to the second team—and the school—and the nation! I shudder to contemplate it. That where it is? I thought so from your facial contortions. Lie still, can't you? How do you ...
— Left Tackle Thayer • Ralph Henry Barbour
... see natural hilarity defy depression; and a whole nation laugh, sing, and dance, under burthens that would nearly break the firm-knit sinews of a Briton. Such was the picture of France at that period, but it was a picture which our English satirist could not contemplate with common patience. The swarms of grotesque figures who paraded the streets excited his indignation, and drew forth a torrent of coarse abusive ridicule, not much to the honour of his liberality. He compared them to Callot's beggars—Lazarus on the ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler
... expecting endless sorrows and everlasting torments hereafter. For it is Epicurus himself that tells us that, had our surmises about heavenly phenomena and our foolish apprehensions of death and the pains that ensue it given us no disquiet, we had not then needed to contemplate nature for our relief. For neither have the brutes any weak surmises of the gods or fond opinion about things after death to disorder themselves with; nor have they as much as imagination or notion that there is ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... of the wicked one to a fearful extent. It is almost an impossibility for the tempted to withstand their wiles. In fashionable, perhaps, more than in the other grades of life, woman as a leader in intemperance, in extravagance, and in opposition to Christ, is to be feared. Her power is fearful to contemplate. The Secretary of the Treasury declares that the national debt is increased, and threatens to increase, unless the fashionable world shall declare against the, importation of that which costs gold, but which fails to contribute to the prosperity of the community. This ...
— The True Woman • Justin D. Fulton
... bill, passed close by me, and flew into the bush, where I perceived them, both together, busily employed in building their nest, and singing as their work went on. I entirely forgot my hunting, to contemplate the objects that were before me. I saw the birds in the air and the fishes in the water working diligently and cheerfully, and all this without hands. I thought it was strange and I became lost in wonder. I looked at myself, and saw two ...
— Anecdotes for Boys • Harvey Newcomb
... which their institutions have invested them, but they will never render them competent to preserve their liberties without the aid of these institutions. Let us for a moment endeavour to fancy Whiggism in a state of rampant predominance; let us try to contemplate England enjoying all those advantages which our present rulers have not yet granted us, and some of which they have as yet only ventured to promise by innuendo. Let us suppose our ancient monarchy abolished, ...
— Sketches • Benjamin Disraeli
... determined not to go out to-day, not on any account. I will sit in this tower room of this palace and write and draw, and will shut these jalousies that open west and south and north-east, and offer distracting views, and I will contemplate the distempered walls in the shade till I have recalled all I saw yesterday. If I go to the window, or outside, there will be too many new things to see. I maintain that for one day of new sights, a day is needed to arrange them in ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... There would be no more staying him than the flight of the wild goose to the reedy nesting grounds could be stayed. Well, a summer in the North would not be so bad, she reflected. But she hated to think of the isolation. It grieved her to contemplate exchanging her beautifully furnished apartment for a log cabin in the woods. There would be a dreary relapse into monotony after months of association with clever people, the swift succession of brilliant little functions. It all delighted her; she responded to her present ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... which thou wilt," replied Guarine, "that can thus drink in with pleasure, and contemplate at your ease, the misery of another, I bid thee beware of me! Utter thy cold-blooded taunts in some other ear; for if my tongue be blunt, I wear a sword ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... capacity. Men the least exercised in reasoning, and the most tenacious of the prejudices of the senses, may yet with one look discover Him who has drawn Himself in all His works. The wisdom and power He has stamped upon everything He has made are seen, as it were, in a glass by those that cannot contemplate Him in His own idea. This is a sensible and popular philosophy, of which any man free from passion and prejudice is capable. Humana autem anima rationalis est, quae mortalibus peccati poena tenebatur, ad hoc diminutionis redacta ut per conjecturas rerum visibilium ad intelligenda ...
— The Existence of God • Francois de Salignac de La Mothe- Fenelon
... insensibly merges from the most intense gold into the purest blue, and is filled with those heads, chaste, innocent, and fervent, that spring beneath the brush of Raphael like the flowers at the breath of Spring. These aerial creatures throng to contemplate the Virgin, and their forms recall those radiances in the shape of crowns that fill the Dantesque Paradise, making the name of Mary resound with their praises. Our eyes and mind lose themselves in the immense multitude ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton
... least, at the risk of wounding the feelings of one who preferred not to let the left hand know what the right hand doeth, we may contemplate the philanthropic labors of one, whose generosity and benevolence knew no bounds; whose friendship devotion and liberality, were felt in all the principal stations of the Underground Rail Road; whose heart went out after the millions in fetters, the fleeing fugitive, the free, proscribed, the ignorant ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... rather unfortunate," said the New Yorker, with imperturbable coolness. "We shall be imprisoned here a couple of hours at the shortest. Let us congratulate ourselves that we each have intelligent company, besides a charming landscape to contemplate." ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 10 • Various
... Owners will find this work valuable in furnishing fresh and useful suggestions. All who contemplate building or improving homes, or erecting structures of any kind, have before them in this work an almost endless series of the latest and best examples from which to make selections, thus saving ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 841, February 13, 1892 • Various
... the Italians opened their eyes with astonishment, with mingled admiration and terror; and we, people of the nineteenth century, are filled with the same feeling, only much stronger and more defined, as we watch the strange ebullition of the Renaissance, seething with good and evil, as we contemplate the enigmatic picture drawn by the puzzled historian, the picture of a people moving on towards civilization and towards chaos. Our first feeling is perplexity; our second feeling, anger; we do not at first know ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee |
