"Contemplative" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... transformed, sometimes into flies, sometimes into worms, or maggots. If one should think such insects useless, let him consider that what makes a part of the great spectacle of the universe, and contributes to its variety, is not altogether useless to sedate and contemplative men. What can be more noble, and more magnificent, than that great number of commonwealths of living creatures so well governed, and every species of which has a different frame from the other? Everything ...
— The Existence of God • Francois de Salignac de La Mothe- Fenelon
... the argument. It held the octette, while men-servants in powder and gold-laced livery offered poires Zobraska, a subtle creation of the chef. Lord Bantry envied the contemplative calm which unexciting circumstances allowed the literary ancient. Mademoiselle de Cressy advanced the feminist view in favour of the modern world. The talk became the light and dancing interplay of opinion and paradox common to ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... and folk cannot say but that the horse are hearty and in spirits." Animated by the natural impetuosity and fire of his temper, young Bucklaw rushed on with the careless speed of a whirlwind. Ravenswood was scarce more moderate in his pace, for his was a mind unwillingly roused from contemplative inactivity, but which, when once put into motion, acquired a spirit of forcible and violent progression. Neither was his eagerness proportioned in all cases to the motive of impulse, but might be compared ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... ever and anon from their lairs with lances couched to spear up the pieces of paper which the people of London have left behind; and this paper-sticking is really the best sport to be enjoyed now on Hampstead Heath, unless one counts fishing for dace in the ponds, which I take to be the most contemplative recreation, except ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 26, 1920 • Various
... She retained her contemplative attitude after the servant had withdrawn for the second time, and it is doubtful how long she would have remained sunk in apparent lethargy had not the unexpected sound of the hall-door bell caused her to start into an upright position with a little ...
— The Mystics - A Novel • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... wisdom; if, indeed, it be true that he, by a kind of divine impulse and greatness of spirit, voluntarily quitted his house, and left his land to lie fallow and to be grazed by sheep like a common. But the life of a contemplative philosopher and that of an active statesman are, I presume, not the same thing; for the one merely employs, upon great and good objects of thought, an intelligence that requires no aid of instruments nor supply of any external materials; whereas the other, who ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... well.[914] Both these women were devoted to Jesus, and each expressed herself in her own way. Martha was of a practical turn, concerned in material service; she was by nature hospitable and self-denying. Mary, contemplative and more spiritually inclined, showed her devotion through the service of companionship ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... my mind from its one object of contemplation. The metaphysics of attention have hardly been sounded to their depths. The mere fixing the look on any single object for a long time may produce very strange effects. Gibbon's well-known story of the monks of Mount Athos and their contemplative practice is often laughed over, but it has a meaning. They were to shut the door of the cell, recline the beard and chin on the breast, and ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... not accustomed to self-analysis. They are mainly men of action, and are supposed to lack the contemplative vision. That was the old belief. This war, however, which has shattered so many accepted ideas, has destroyed that conviction too. Nothing is more surprising than the revelation of their feelings disclosed in the soldiers' letters. They ...
— Tommy Atkins at War - As Told in His Own Letters • James Alexander Kilpatrick
... an element of excitement: an element which is wholesome enough at times for every one; most wholesome at all times for the man pent up in London air and London work; but which takes away from the angler's most delicate enjoyment, that dreamy contemplative repose, broken by just enough amusement to keep his body active, while his mind is quietly taking in every sight and sound of nature. Let the Londoner have his six weeks every year among crag and heather, and return with lungs expanded and muscles braced to his nine months' prison. The countryman, ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... of vivid velvet sward, even at times when the wild oats and "wire-grasses" of the plains are already yellowing. The placid river, unstained at this point by mining sluices or mill drift, runs clear under its contemplative shadows. Originally the camping-ground of a Digger Chief, it passed from his tenancy with the American rifle bullet that terminated his career. The pioneer who thus succeeded to its attractive calm gave way in turn ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... which he genially recognized and appreciated; nay, he might love her, but the love would be a quasi-paternal one, not the love that demands absolute possession and brooks no rivalry. His attitude was contemplative and beneficent, not selfish and exclusive. His greatest pleasure would be to see her married to some one worthy of her. Meantime he might devote himself to her freely ...
— David Poindexter's Disappearance and Other Tales • Julian Hawthorne
... was a later fruit; but it is ripening now. We have more Sisters of Charity than contemplative nuns, at this time. There are hospitals in every Christian land for the sick and the aged. It is remembered now, too, that Christ had compassion on the blind, and the deaf, and the insane: and charity to these is now the ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau
... this point, because they will be aware that such activity as they manifest is the direct effect of something larger and greater than human volition, and that the busiest lives are as much the inevitable outcome of this insuperable force as their own more secluded, more contemplative lives. ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... roadway had become a flowing ribbon of silk, gemmed with yellow cat-like eyes that floated past wary and curious in their regard for him and his nervous horse. Two Basque herders brought up the rear. They were short, broad, swarthy men, black-eyed, vivid-faced, contemplative and philosophic of expression. They pulled off their hats and ducked their heads to him. Forrest lifted his right hand, the quirt dangling from wrist, the straight forefinger touching the rim of his Baden Powell in ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... the world would have failed to observe the slightest trace of cunning, or want of a balanced mind in their expression. During the progress of his story he had continually held his ring where he could see it, and several times had raised it to the light, in a contemplative sort of way, as if he drew some satisfaction from its appearance. He bowed his head in his hands as he ceased speaking, and some moments elapsed before he looked up, though when he did so ...
— The Somnambulist and the Detective - The Murderer and the Fortune Teller • Allan Pinkerton
... court, where, for the frolic lords, Under the profaned silence of the rose, The syrinx, and the stringed sonorous shell, Governed the twinkling heeled Terpischore. We softly went and turned towards the bay, And found another world, contemplative Of shells and pebbles by the ocean shore. I do remember, once, on such an eve, Pacing the polished margin of the deep, We found two weeds that had embraced each other, And talked of friendship, love and sympathy. My ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... rises and leans against the Adams' fireplace. The Adams' fireplace leans against her. It falls on to her with a tremendous crash.... Lord Gumthorpe comes forward and gazes at the jumbled debris. He is conscious of a sense of despairing conflict—the conflict between contemplative amazement and some natural but well-controlled demand for concrete action. An appalling conviction comes to him that he ought to do something. Under the fallen mess of brick, marble, and wood there are feeble undulations. A phrase keeps running through his mind—"Expressing ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 1, 1914 • Various
... of oblong square, it is girdled round by a well-trimmed hedge of limes, from which, at intervals, pollarded trees shoot up; while the corners are thickly woven each into a shady arbour, where seats are arranged for the accommodation of the contemplative. It is, however, after you have passed beneath the arch, that the holy quiet of the spot strikes you most forcibly. Laid out with singular good taste into parallelograms, and having the paths which divide them one from another, shaded ...
— Germany, Bohemia, and Hungary, Visited in 1837. Vol. II • G. R. Gleig
... the practical life is also dependent on Plato's. In the Tenth Book of the Ethics he puts the claims of the Contemplative Life even higher than Plato ever did, so that the practical life appears to be only ancillary to it. He does not feel in the same degree as Plato the call for the philosopher to descend once more ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... Heriot's narratives by telling him that this picking bones of the dish was not to my taste. He twitted me with turning parson. I spoke of Kiomi. Heriot flushed, muttering, 'The little devil!' with his usual contemplative relish of devilry. We parted, feeling that severe tension of the old links keeping us together which indicates the lack of new ones: a point where simple affection must bear the strain of friendship if ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... women—and especially of unmarried women—among our poetic leaders is, I think, to be found in the fact that women, more often than men, command the means of living for a generous portion of the year that vital, unstrenuous, contemplative existence demanded by poetry as an antecedent condition of its creation. It is a significant fact that, according to Arnold Bennett, nearly all of the foremost English writers live far from the town. Most of the more promising American poets of both sexes, however, ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... himself, Chichikov's mind had strayed elsewhere, for the reason that it had become taken up with grave meditation on the subject of the purchase just made. Suddenly finding himself no longer a fictitious proprietor, but the owner of a real, an actually existing, estate, he became contemplative, and his plans and ideas assumed such a serious vein as imparted to his features an unconsciously ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... how many shares of the Communal land he will take, and replies in a slow, contemplative way, "I have two sons, and there is myself, so I'll take three shares, or somewhat less, if it ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... Cellini himself would have wiped out the insult with blood. Still Cellini knew that personal violence was not in the line of Michelangelo's character; for Michelangelo, according to his friend and best biographer, Condivi, was by nature, "as is usual with men of sedentary and contemplative habits, rather timorous than otherwise, except when he is roused by righteous anger to resent unjust injuries or wrongs done to himself or others, in which case he plucks up more spirit than those who are esteemed brave; but, for the rest, ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... he might easily have been mistaken for a slightly built and shapelier variety of the gorilla but for the true man-hands and the steady, contemplative, foreseeing look in the eyes. He came and examined the mangled bulk of the Dinoceras, scrutinized the horns and tusks minutely, and strove with all his force to wrench one of the latter from its socket, as if hoping to make some use of it. Then, fastidiously selecting a shred of the victim's ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... he promised himself some recompense for his disappointment before it was many hours old. Meanwhile, he would show Villon that all who came from Valmy were not sharers in Commines' harsh judgment. He found the poet contemplative over the remains of his breakfast, but in a mood ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... exciting novels; prone even to scientific theorizing and cursory peeps through microscopes. Old Leisure was quite a different personage. He only read one newspaper, innocent of leaders, and was free from that periodicity of sensations which we call post-time. He was a contemplative, rather stout gentleman, of excellent digestion; of quiet perceptions, undiseased by hypothesis; happy in his inability to know the causes of things, preferring the things themselves. He lived chiefly in the country, among pleasant seats and homesteads, ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... visits amongst the poor parishioners. Of course, he often finds a little work for his wife to do, and I hope she is not sorry to help him. I believe it is not bad for me that his bent should be so wholly towards matters of life and active usefulness; so little inclined to the literary and contemplative. As to his continued affection and kind attentions it does not become me to say much of them; but they neither change ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... this occupation was proof of a reflective and contemplative organization, and he had brought him away without any other recommendation. The noble carriage of this gentleman, for whom he believed himself to be engaged, had won Planchet—that was the name of ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... affected—particularly at the trot—by a kind of pitching movement to and fro across the axle, which well entitles it to the style of a Noddy. The hood describes a considerable arc against the landscape, with a solemnly absurd effect on the contemplative pedestrian. To ride in such a carriage cannot be numbered among the things that appertain to glory; but I have no doubt it may be useful in liver complaint. Thence, perhaps, ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... surprises, one better than another. The starlings have returned, everywhere there is the gurgling of water, in places where the snow has thawed the grass is already green. The day drags on like eternity. One lives as though in Australia, somewhere at the ends of the earth; one's mood is calm, contemplative, and animal, in the sense that one does not regret yesterday or look forward to tomorrow. From here, far away, people seem very good, and that is natural, for in going away into the country we are not hiding ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... and natural gifts, Leo the Thirteenth is essentially active rather than contemplative, and it is not surprising that the chief acts of his pontificate should have dealt rather with political matters than with questions of dogma and ecclesiastical authority. It has certainly been the object of the ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... and speaking with fervor,—not, however, for Heaven's sake, to become mere musical pictures, but inhabitants of a positive, practical world such as we see in every chapter of the Old Testament; and the contemplative and pathetic element, which you desire, must be entirely conveyed to our apprehension by the words and the mood of the ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton
... ascertained that we were now quite near Hartington and Dovedale. Hartington was a famous resort of fishermen and well known to Isaak Walton, the "Father of Fishermen," and author of that famous book The Compleat Angler or the Contemplative Man's Recreation, so full of such cheerful piety and contentment, such sweet freshness and simplicity, as to give the book a perennial charm. He was a great friend of Charles Cotton of Beresford Hall, who built a fine fishing-house near the famous Pike Pool on the River ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... the Phantom, echoing his contemplative tone. "I think he did, once. I am sure he did. Better had she loved him less—less secretly, less dearly, from the shallower depths of a ...
— The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargin • Charles Dickens
... better to bury treasure," said he once more; but his tone was altered; it was more contemplative; and many smoke-rings came from the shrunk lips before another word; but through them all, his dark eyes, dull with age, ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung
... latter had retired, devoted to further study. Here he wrote L'Allegro and Il Penseroso in 1632, Arcades (1633), Comus in 1634, and Lycidas in 1637. The first celebrates the pleasures of a life of cheerful innocence, and the second of contemplative, though not gloomy, retirement, and the last is a lament for a lost friend, Edward King, who perished at sea. Arcades and Comus are masques set to music by Henry Lawes, having for their motives respectively family affection and maiden purity. ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... our author upon the validity of "the principle of the Unconditioned or the Infinite." "Supposing it were conceded that some faint glimmering of this great truth [the existence of a First Cause] might, by induction, have been discovered by contemplative minds, by what means could they have demonstrated to themselves that he is eternal, self-existent, immortal, and independent?"[365] "Between things visible and invisible, time and eternity, beings finite and beings ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... immerse herself in that atmosphere of contemplative eternity, and so strangely did it affect me that I should not have been surprised to have awaked a century or so later and found her just beginning to enunciate ...
— The Strength of the Strong • Jack London
... left me time for many things: time in the first place to make my own conditions; doubtless after them there would be further progression on the old lines—luxuries added to necessaries; a healthful, fruitful life of thought and action combined; and at last a peaceful, contemplative ...
— Green Mansions - A Romance of the Tropical Forest • W. H. Hudson
... the hut door Will Henderson was seated smoking, with his elbows planted on his knees, and his two hands supporting the bowl of his pipe. His eyes were as calmly contemplative as those of the stolen cattle in ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... witch he loved before the gift of Eve,) That, ere the snake's, her sweet tongue could deceive, And her enchanted hair was the first gold. And still she sits, young while the earth is old, And, subtly of herself contemplative, Draws men to watch the bright web she can weave, Till heart and body and life are in its hold. The rose and poppy are her flowers: for where Is he not found, O Lilith! whom shed scent And soft-shed kisses and soft sleep shall snare? Lo! as that ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... powerful aid. But this is what I am as yet totally incompetent to effect—to realise, in speaking, anything, however small, which at all satisfies my mind. Debating seems to me less difficult, though unattained. But to hold in serene contemplative action the mental faculties in the turbid excitement of debate, so as to see truth clearly and set it forth such as it is, this ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... the lumberman's face lost, during a single instant, its mask of immobility. His steel-blue eyes flashed, his mouth twitched with some strong emotion. For the first time, too, he spoke without his contemplative pause ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... autocratic tyranny, which the presentiment of its speedy end had driven into madness, the bewitching strains of the new Hebrew lyre resounded through Lithuania. They came from Micah Joseph Lebensohn, the son of "Adam" Lebensohn, author of high-flown Hebrew odes [1]—a contemplative Jewish youth, suffering from tuberculosis and Weltschmerz. He began his poetic career in 1840 by a Hebrew adaptation of the second book of Virgil's Aeneid [2] but soon turned to Jewish motifs. In the musical rhymes of the "Songs of ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow
... may seem, you cannot always be sitting at the Master's feet in that contemplative, ecstatic mood sometimes attributed to Mary. Like Martha, we have to do a good deal of serving. Whether we are encumbered by 'much serving' is a separate question; but if we are to fulfil the Divine tasks we have to do a great deal of serving as well ...
— Standards of Life and Service • T. H. Howard
... all else seems to be dying. That is why Providence delivers it from passions too personal or too general, and has given to its organization patience and persistence, an enduring sensibility, and that contemplative sense upon which ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... He had a boat of his own at Putney, and whenever Sir Hugo did not want him, it was his chief holiday to row till past sunset and come in again with the stars. Not that he was in a sentimental stage; but he was in another sort of contemplative mood perhaps more common in the young men of our day—that of questioning whether it were worth while to take part in the battle of the world: I mean, of course, the young men in whom the unproductive ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... teach that, for the attainment of beatitude, it is necessary to pass through five stages—(1) that of santi, quiet repose or calm and contemplative piety; (2) that of dasya, the slave state—the surrender of the whole will to God; (3) that of sakhya, or friendship; (4) that of vatsalya, or filial affection; and (5) that of madhurya, or ...
— India's Problem Krishna or Christ • John P. Jones
... enjoyment of the excitement of the scene, totally different from the contemplative philosophy with which it would formerly have been regarded. Every incident of motion and of energy is seized upon with indescribable delight, and every line of the composition animated with a force and fury which ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... with you the wisdom of contemplative quiescence, While the world is in a ferment of unmeaning effervescence, That its jar and rush and riot bring no good one-half so sterling As your fleecy clouds of fragrance that are now about ...
— Pipe and Pouch - The Smoker's Own Book of Poetry • Various
... upon as a special and sacred office whereby the nun became the mystic bride of the Church, and it was no uncommon thing for the sisters, when racked and tortured by the temptations of the world, to fall into these ecstatic contemplative moods wherein they became possessed with powers beyond those of earth. In that age of quite universal ignorance, it is not to be wondered at that the emotional spirit was too strongly developed in all religious observances, and, as we have seen, ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... the Captain Mountain exposed his view of the encounter, by growing stiller, apparently growing smaller, without a squeak, like the entrapped; and profoundly contemplative, after the style of the absolutely detached, who foresee the fatal crash, and are calculating, far ahead of events, the means ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... had never been loose, were now modelled by a stricter standard. The empire of religious duty extended itself to his looks, gestures, and phrases. All levities of speech, and negligences of behaviour, were proscribed. His air was mournful and contemplative. He laboured to keep alive a sentiment of fear, and a belief of the awe-creating presence of the Deity. Ideas foreign to this were sedulously excluded. To suffer their intrusion was a crime against the Divine ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown
... life of a husbandman is the most delectable," he wrote on another occasion to the same friend. "It is honorable, it is amusing, and, with judicious management, it is profitable. To see plants rise from the earth and flourish by the superior skill and bounty of the laborer fills a contemplative mind with ideas which are more easy ...
— George Washington: Farmer • Paul Leland Haworth
... command, not nature merely, but the gods themselves. Among the Jews the Essenes by the Dead Sea, and the Therapeutae in Egypt, had formed ascetic communities, the former more "practical," the latter more "contemplative:" but both alike agreed in the purpose of escaping from the world into a life of poverty and simplicity, piety and virtue; and among the countless philosophic sects of Asia, known to ecclesiastical writers as "heretics," more than one had ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley
... history of the work, which, with the Origin of Species, marks an epoch in the history of biological sciences—the work with which the cautious, peace-loving investigator ventured forth from his contemplative life into the arena of strife and unrest, and laid himself open to all the annoyances that deep-rooted belief and prejudice, and the prevailing tendency of scientific thought ...
— Evolution in Modern Thought • Ernst Haeckel
... entirely dissipated. The early loss of an amiable young woman, whom he had married for love, and who was quickly followed to the grave by an only child, had also served, even after the lapse of many years, to soften a disposition naturally mild and contemplative. His feelings on the present occasion were therefore likely to differ from those of the severe disciplinarian, strict magistrate, and distrustful ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... abroad that I had lived two days and nights without meat or drink, some began to believe that I was a holy madman, while others supposed me to be stark mad; wherefore they consulted to send for certain men who dwell in the mountain, who lead a contemplative life, and are esteemed holy as we do hermits. When they came to give their judgment concerning me, and were debating among themselves for upwards of an hour on my case, I pissed in my hands, and threw the water in their faces, on which they agreed I was no saint, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... tongue," apparently by Randall, "for the common good."[69] It is a profoundly mystical book, characterized by interior depth and insight. Its central aim is the exposition of a stage of spiritual life which transcends both "the active life" and "the contemplative life," a stage which the writer calls "the Life Supereminent." In this highest stage "the essential will of God is practiced," without strain or effort, because God Himself has now become the inner ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... upon a serious contemplation of the great attribute of God, his mercy; and did a little cherish it in myself, because I found therein no malice, and a ready weight to sway me from the other extreme of despair, whereunto melancholy and contemplative natures are too easily disposed. A third there is, which I did never positively maintain or practise, but have often wished it had been consonant to truth, and not offensive to my religion; and that is, the prayer for the dead; whereunto I was inclined from some charitable ...
— Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend • Sir Thomas Browne
... whom the cares of hospitality devolved were consulting with the farmer's wife about preparations for tea, any stray guest might search for wood-plants in the skirts of the copse on the hill behind, or talk with the children who were jumping in and out of an old saw-pit in the wood, or if contemplative, might watch the minnows in the brook, which was here ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... intently watchful of affairs near at hand. The good-will can be sustained only by a mind that now and then withdraws itself from its engagements, and expands its view to the full measure of life. For the momentary inhibiting of the narrower practical impulses, and the evoking of this quiet and contemplative mood, the love of nature and the love of art are the most ...
— The Moral Economy • Ralph Barton Perry
... but not unfriendly tone with Valence, his rough home-truths with the parasitical courtiers, and his frank confidence with Melchior, are admirably discriminated. Melchior himself, little as he speaks, is a fine sketch of the contemplative, bookish man who finds no more congenial companion and study than a successful man of action. His attitude of detachment, a mere spectator in the background, is well in keeping with the calm and thoughtful character of the play. Valence, the true ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... state are pleasant incidentally because of that *[Sidenote: 1153a] tendency: but the active working is really in the desires excited in the remaining (sound) part of our state or nature: for there are Pleasures which have no connection with pain or desire: the acts of contemplative intellect, for instance, in which case there is no deficiency in the nature or state of him who performs ...
— Ethics • Aristotle
... Vincentio Saviolo, an Italian fencing-master in the service of the Earl of Essex. None of Shakespeare's comedies breathes a more placid temper or approaches more nearly to a pastoral drama. Yet there is no lack of intellectual or poetic energy in the enunciation of the contemplative philosophy which is cultivated in the Forest of Arden. In Rosalind, Celia, Phoebe, and Audrey, four types of youthful womanhood are contrasted with ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... patient suffering the modern martyr has endured, he pursued, till he accomplished, the useful object of his labours. He, perhaps, was the first who exhibited to us other heroes than those of Rome and Greece; sages as contemplative, and a people more magnificent even than the iron masters of the world. Among other oriental productions, his most considerable is "The History of the Saracens." The first volume appeared in 1708, and the second ten years afterwards. In the preface to the last volume, the oriental student ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... good, be it well understood, Was a man of very contemplative mood— He would pour by the hour, o'er a weed or a flower, Or the slugs, that came crawling out after a shower; Black beetles, bumble-bees, blue-bottle flies, And moths, were of no small account in his eyes; An "industrious flea," ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... in the plays. But, in a certain sense, she did actually find it there. Shakespeare has surface beneath surface, to an immeasurable depth, adapted to the plummet-line of every reader; his works present many phases of truth, each with scope large enough to fill a contemplative mind. Whatever you seek in him you will surely discover, provided you seek truth. There is no exhausting the various interpretation of his symbols; and a thousand years hence, a world of new readers will possess a whole library of new books, as we ourselves ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the Zen, or contemplative sect, did, in a sense, both precede and follow that of Shingon. The word Zen is a shortened form of the term Zenna, which is a transliteration into Chinese of the Sanskrit word Dhyana, or contemplation. It teaches ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... temper to the worshippers. Moreover, under the old religions none obtained divine honours save those who were loaded with worldly glory, such as captains of armies and rulers of cities; whereas our religion glorifies men of a humble and contemplative, rather than of an active life. Accordingly, while the highest good of the old religions consisted in magnanimity, bodily strength, and all those other qualities which make men brave, our religion places it in humility, lowliness, and contempt ...
— Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius • Niccolo Machiavelli
... indeed," he remarked after a contemplative pause. "And you think then, Ritson, that ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood
... contemplative, meditative, reflective, cogitative, wistful, pensive, preoccupied, abstracted; ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... a steady contemplative gaze, and there was no doubt that her comment was justified. Millicent's face was pallid, there was a certain weariness in her eyes, and on the whole, her expression ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... good is threefold as stated in Ethic. i, 8; one consisting in external things, for instance riches; another, consisting in bodily goods; the third, consisting in the goods of the soul among which the goods of the contemplative life take precedence of the goods of the active life, as the Philosopher shows (Ethic. x, 7), and as our Lord declared (Luke 10:42), "Mary hath chosen the better part." Of these goods those that are external are directed to those which belong to the body, ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... every strong right hand, and each left hand chinking cheerfully the doubloons deep lodged in the auriferous caverns of their trunk-hose; while in those fairy-rings of fragrant mist, which circled round their contemplative brows, flitted most pleasant visions of Wiltshire farmers jogging into Sherborne fair, their heaviest shillings in their pockets, to buy (unless old Aubrey lies) the lotus-leaf of Torridge for its weight in silver, and draw from thence, after the example of the Caciques of Dariena, supplies ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... far from being contemplative, although he certainly was rather fond of inflated poetry, and even as a planter, surrounded by his acres and his slaves, there is no evidence that he led a lazy life. He seems to have been partly occupied in continuing the important acquaintances ...
— Paul Jones • Hutchins Hapgood
... that psalm, wherein, for height of poetry and wonders, the prophet David seems even to exceed himself, how doth he there express himself in choice metaphors, even to the amazement of a contemplative reader, concerning the sea, the rivers, and the fish therein contained! And the great naturalist Pliny says, " That nature's great and wonderful power is more demonstrated in the sea than on the land ". And this may appear, by the numerous ...
— The Complete Angler • Izaak Walton
... tender-hearted. He said nothing, but, as usual, he thought much, as he gazed in a contemplative manner at his oily parent, and there is no saying to what lengths of self-sacrifice he would have gone if he had not been aroused, and his thoughts scattered to the winds, by a yell so tremendous that it might well have petrified him on the spot. But it did nothing of ...
— The Giant of the North - Pokings Round the Pole • R.M. Ballantyne
... tall, shapely, and extremely pretty, with as sweet and even a temper as one could possibly imagine, which eminently fitted her for dreamy, contemplative love-making, such as one reads of in idyls and romances. She would willingly have spent her life in. contemplating the King,—in loving and adoring him without ever opening her mouth; and to her, the sweet silence of a tete-a-tete seemed preferable ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... wrangler of Cambridge) adds:—"A fact struck all our school contemporaries, that my brother and I were complementary, so to speak, in point of ability and disposition. He was contemplative, poetical, and literary to a remarkable degree, showing great power in that line. I was practical, mathematical, and linguistic. Between us we should have made a very decent sort of ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton
... a stranger? Sir, to your very good health and our better acquaintance!—there is, in this city of Dunedin, a certain implication of streets which reflects the utmost credit on the designer and the publicans—at every hundred yards is seated the Judicious Tavern, so that persons of contemplative mind are secure, at moderate distances, of refreshment. I have been doing a trot in that favoured quarter, favoured by art and nature. A few chosen comrades—enemies of publicity and friends to wit and wine—obliged me with their society. 'Along the cool, sequestered vale of Register Street ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... amuse the others, and the party broke up. A little later Florent returned to Lebigre's, and indeed he became quite attached to the "cabinet," finding a seductive charm in Robine's contemplative silence, Logre's fiery outbursts, and Charvet's cool venom. When he went home, he did not at once retire to bed. He had grown very fond of his attic, that girlish bedroom, where Augustine had left scraps of ribbons, souvenirs, and other feminine trifles ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... of the world around him would have been a very different affair; however obscure, however reserved, his own personal life, his sense of the life of his fellow-mortals would have been almost infinitely more various. The negative side of the spectacle on which Hawthorne looked out, in his contemplative saunterings and reveries, might, indeed, with a little ingenuity, be made almost ludicrous; one might enumerate the items of high civilization, as it exists in other countries, which are absent from the texture of American ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.
... to read. As he scanned the copies of directives, reports, operations logs, and procedures the process became automatic, and part of his consciousness turned contemplative. ...
— A Fine Fix • R. C. Noll
... she said—when he tried to draw her out of her contemplative mood, showing her the wild furzy slopes and the fir-trees, almost the only trees that grow in this region—standing in black clumps on the hill-tops, like sentinel-ghosts of the old Romans, who used to encamp there—"I fear you have made me as ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... his jaw continues to work, turning round and round like the grindstone of a painter when he is rubbing down his colors. Look, and you will see that he will remain there for hours together, motionless and contemplative, absorbed in this incomprehensible mastication, rolling about in his throat from time to time some invisible food. Do not laugh at him, however. As you sec him there he is performing his part in ...
— The History of a Mouthful of Bread - And its effect on the organization of men and animals • Jean Mace
... at Annan Academy. Although he had, at his parents' desire, commenced his studies with a view to entering the Scottish Church, the idea of becoming a minister was growingly distasteful to him. A fellow-student describes his habits at this time as lonely and contemplative; and we know from another source that his vacations were principally spent among the hills and by the rivers of his native county. In the summer of 1816 he was promoted to the post of "classical and mathematical ...
— On the Choice of Books • Thomas Carlyle
... plunged into wide and miscellaneous reading, both at Harvard, and at the magnificent Boston Library. During his first two years at college, his bent seemed to lie rather towards the studious and contemplative than towards the active life. His brother, at this time, appeared to him to be of a more pleasure-loving and adventurous disposition; and there exists a letter to his mother in which, after contrasting, with obvious allusion to Chaucer's "Prologue", the ...
— Poems • Alan Seeger
... and seemed in its silence to say, "This is the abode of tranquility." All was still: not a sound was heard save soft murmuring tones which seemed to whisper in the ear of the weary traveller, "Come, and partake of nature's bounty," and to complain that such an offer should be made in vain. To a contemplative mind, such a scene might have suggested a thousand delightful reflections. But what charms could it have for the soul of Alexander, whose breast was filled with schemes of ambition and conquest; whose eye was familiarised with rapine and slaughter; and whose ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... National lounged in his chair half an hour longer, and then he lit a mild cigar, and went over to Tom Merwin's house. Merwin, a ranchman in brown duck, with a contemplative eye, sat with his feet upon a table, plaiting a ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... described this impulse in his Genio y Figura. Rafaela, the heroine of this novel, says that, after her bath: "I fall into a puerility which may be innocent or vicious, I cannot decide. I only know that it is a purely contemplative act, a disinterested admiration of beauty. It is not coarse sensuality, but aesthetic platonism. I imitate Narcissus; and I apply my lips to the cold surface of the mirror and kiss my image. It is the love ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... quite in the current now and floating by his side. "It's Mamie—so far as I've had it from you—who'll be their great card." And then as his contemplative silence wasn't a denial she significantly added: "I ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... beautiful dream of hope to come here silently, to let every man, every house and every brick of the houses silently teach me, and, after having learned many fair and useful things, to return silently and thankfully home. Unfortunately I cannot now be a silent and contemplative pupil in this place, as I desired to be, but I must speak, forced by the time in which we are living and suffering. I will speak in order not to teach you, but to thank you. And I have to thank you much in the name of the Serbian nation ...
— Serbia in Light and Darkness - With Preface by the Archbishop of Canterbury, (1916) • Nikolaj Velimirovic
... beast, and unregenerate man. It is the place of faun and nymph and satyr, the plain where wars are fought and cities built and work is done. Thence we climb to purified humanity, the mountains of purgation, the solitude and simplicity of contemplative life not yet made perfect by freedom from the flesh. Higher comes that thin white belt, where are the resting-places of angelic feet, the points whence purged souls take their flight towards infinity. Above ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... your ingenuity in a rational and contemplative manner.—No, I do not proscribe certain forms of philosophical speculation which involve an approach to the absurd or the ludicrous, such as you may find, for example, in the folio of the Reverend ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... world became a less attractive place as the successive invasions of the barbarians brought ever-increasing disorder. The monastery was the natural refuge not only of the spiritually minded, but of those of a studious or contemplative disposition who disliked the life of a soldier and were disinclined to face the dangers and uncertainties of the times. The monastic life was safe and peaceful, as well as holy. Even the rude and unscrupulous warriors hesitated to destroy the property or disturb the life of those who were ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... ever happened to you, when you were walking alone and in contemplative mood, to lie flat on your face in the grassy underbrush of a forest, amid the peculiar vegetation, of many and varying species, that grows between the fallen autumn leaves, and to let your eyes stray along ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... the old place," I said, one day in August as I was passing the lodge, and rode at a quiet contemplative walk down the avenue. I hung my rein over one of the rails of the porch steps, and passed round into the garden. Not a flower to be seen; but the place of them famously supplied with potatoes and other useful articles—and the same evidence of absenteeism in ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... that angling is the contemplative man's recreation, and, having had in these later years much to con over in my mind, I know that he is right. But it is no occupation for a fuming man, and as I marched up and down I forgot all about my cork, till, with a short ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... features of the incident he did not come to consider until later, but as he walked contemplative along Babylon Lane he detected sounds of distant gunfire, distinct from the more remote rumbling which was the voice of the battle front. He stood still—listening. An air raid on ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer
... crossed the street, and, going in with the crowd, stood in a recess of the wall looking on at the army of clerks handling money, and the cues of depositors at the tellers' windows. An old gentleman whom I knew, a director of the bank, passing me and observing my contemplative attitude, stopped ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy
... 'Do not eat the fruit of the stricken branch,'" replied Hien, "and this person will never owe his success to one who is so detestable in his life and morals that with every facility for a scholarly and contemplative existence he freely announces his barbarous intention of becoming a pirate. Truly the Dragon of Justice does but sleep for a little time, and when he awakens all that will be left of the mercenary Tsin Lung and those ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... a standstill. Miss Tyrell, with her toes on the fender, gazed in a contemplative fashion at the fire. "I didn't know——" began Fraser, ...
— A Master Of Craft • W. W. Jacobs
... of the permanent and certain characteristicks of a vigorous intellect.' Rambler, No. 103. 'Curiosity is in great and generous minds the first passion and the last; and perhaps always predominates in proportion to the strength of the contemplative faculties.' Ib. No. 150. ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 3 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... combination with the speculative sense, with the tendency which carries a man toward the contemplative study of life and nature as a whole, is the critical sense—the tendency which, in the realm of action and concrete performance, carries him, as Amiel expresses it, "droit au defaut," and makes him conscious at once of the weak point, ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... contented man, because he's nearly always pleased with himself. If he fails at anything he can usually excuse himself on the grounds of somebody else's damnfoolishness. If he succeeds he complacently assumes that he did it out of his own greatness. Action—that's the thing. The contemplative, analytical mind is the mind that suffers. Man was a happy animal until he began to indulge in abstract thinking. And now that the burden of thought is laid on him, he frequently uses it to ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... Perhaps a germ of love was springing in their hearts, so pure that it might blossom in Paradise, since it could not be matured on earth; for women worship such gentle dignity as his; and the proud, contemplative, yet kindly soul is oftenest captivated by simplicity like hers. But while they spoke softly, and he was watching the happy sadness, the lightsome shadows, the shy yearnings of a maiden's nature, the wind through the Notch took a deeper ...
— The Great Stone Face - And Other Tales Of The White Mountains • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... no chance of ennui in the week in London before a voyage; you have packing, shopping, insuring, and buying tickets and general bustling round—what charming occupations for the contemplative mind! Then you throw in visits to friends, and acquaintances call on you, all in the concentrated week; you breakfast late, lunch heavily, rush off to a hurried dinner somewhere, then rush off to a play or some function ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... singularly successful in detaching herself from all the wear and tear of modern life and has produced a book filled with sweetness, beautiful in ideas, charming in characterizations, highly contemplative, and evidencing a philosophy of life ...
— Christmas - A Story • Zona Gale
... one was Socrates. It is all very well to have a contemplative disposition; but it need not be accompanied by a ...
— The Comic Latin Grammar - A new and facetious introduction to the Latin tongue • Percival Leigh
... and ecstasy, were interwoven and intertwined. The brilliant qualities of the Greek spirit, its sagacity and subtlety of intelligence, its lucidity and facility of expression, were animated and vivified by the Oriental spark, and gained new life and vigour. On the other hand, the contemplative spirit of the Orient, which is characterised by its aspiration towards the invisible and mysterious, would never have produced a coherent system or theory had it not been aided by Greek science. It was the ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 11 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... can the imagination be more effectually or safely exercised and improved than by the constant perusal and study of our best Poets. Poetry appeals to the universal sympathies of mankind. With the contemplative writers, we can indulge our pensive and thoughtful tastes. With the describers of natural scenery, we can delight in the beauties and glories of the external universe. With the great dramatists, we are able to study all the phases of the human mind, and to take their fictitious personages ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... thought that this was the place to which I should like to retire for a year, in order to write the book I had so often contemplated, and never found time to begin. This, I reflected, was a place of peace, of freedom from all distraction, the place for calm, contemplative meditation. ...
— The Wonder • J. D. Beresford
... a vase that stood between the reproduction of a Giotto Madonna and a Japanese devil-hunt, both results of the study of art taken up during the past winter by her mother's favorite woman's club. Mrs. Emery watched the process in the contemplative relief which follows an emotional outbreak, and her eyes wandered to the objects on either side the vase. The sight stirred her to speech. "Oh, Marietta, how do you suppose the house will seem to Lydia after she has seen so much? I hope she won't be disappointed. ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... Here I halted at an inn in the shadow of old walnut-trees. A few yards off, under one of the great trees, was a high wooden crucifix, around which some twenty or thirty geese were standing or lying down, all in a digestive or contemplative mood, and through the openings between the boles and the branches were seen the sunlit meadows sloping to the low willows and the ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... Venetian of the Venetians, the very soul of Venice. After God, his Prince and the Republic claimed obedience; and when S. Mark called, Sarpi abandoned science for the service of his country. 'Singularly composed of active and contemplative energies was the life of our Father; yielding to God that which he was able, to his Prince that which duty dictated, and to the domain of Venice more than any law ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... I not to have been happy when all who were with me were happy? I will not run the risk of wearying even my contemplative reader by describing to him the various reflexes of happiness that shone from the countenances behind me in the carriage, but I will try to hit each off in a word, or a single simile. My Ethelwyn's face was bright with the brightness of a pale silvery moon that has done her harvest work, and, ...
— The Seaboard Parish Volume 1 • George MacDonald
... foreground. Around its rim ran an inscription in Latin, warning mortal man that time flows as swiftly as water and exhorting him to make the most of his hours; after which piece of Jacobean moralising it set itself shamelessly to beguile all who might pass that way into an abandonment of contemplative repose. On all sides of it a stretch of smooth turf spread away, broken up here and there by groups of dwarfish chestnut and mulberry trees, whose leaves and branches cast a laced pattern of shade beneath them. On ...
— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki
... distinction from the Lamas. In China it has been used first as a synonym for {.} {.}, monks engaged in popular teaching (teachers of the Law), in distinction from {.} {.}, disciplinists, and {.} {.}, contemplative philosophers (meditationists); then it was used to designate the abbots of monasteries. But it is now popularly applied to all Buddhist monks. In the text there seems to be implied some distinction between the "teachers" and the "ho-shang;"—probably, the Pali Akariya and ...
— Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms • Fa-Hien
... high box which during most of the day covered our stove was a little lady, writing in a note-book. On the forward deck, at the foot of the mast, sat a young man in a state of placidness. His feet stuck out on the bowsprit, while his mildly contemplative eyes went ...
— The Rudder Grangers Abroad and Other Stories • Frank R. Stockton
... with imperial magnificence. This suggested anything but doubts of the Sovereign's undisturbed rule. At Windsor, the current of affairs went merrily as a marriage-bell, the Royal party enjoying "the contemplative man's recreation" on the Virginia Water with a zeal that would have gratified, if it did not edify, Izaak Walton; and now the Coronation was boldly talked of—indeed, preparations were making for the performance of this ceremony with the ...
— Memoirs of the Court of George IV. 1820-1830 (Vol 1) - From the Original Family Documents • Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... the only thoroughfare of the town that yet retains some vestige of traffic. It is a fine, long street bordered by stone arcades, within which are the shops, and without which in the pleasant afternoon are the rosy and contemplative shopkeepers. It would seem a pity to disturb their dreamy repose by offering to trade; and in justice to Castilian taste and feeling I must say that nobody does it. Halfway down the street a side alley runs to the right, ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... the dog, that sat with contemplative sadness on the hearth, and kissing its bulging brow. 'Darling one, will you be drawn? Shall its mummy draw its portrait?' Then she chuckled gleefully, and turning to Gudrun, said: ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... commune with the bright spirit of dead authors, whose inspired pens have left behind them the glorious scintillations of immortal genius, which sparkle on every page! When the soft light of declining day steals gently into the dusky room, and dim shadows hover in every nook, the truly contemplative mind pores with a quiet rapture over the sublime creations of Shakespeare, the massive grandeur of Scott, and the glowing beauties of Byron. Then are the dull realities of life forgotten, and the soul revels in a new and almost ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn
... Holden being upon the watch, the deep stillness abroad was broken by a shrill scream, resembling the shriek of a frightened woman or child more nearly than any other sound. The two companions had been sitting in a contemplative mood, listening to the deep breathing of the sleepers, when this cry came upon their ears. Both sprang erect. "What is that?" exclaimed Holden, who was not an experienced backwoodsman, in comparison ...
— The First White Man of the West • Timothy Flint
... does not look specially clever," said Franks, in a contemplative voice. "Her speech is nothing at all remarkable; in fact, in conversation I think her ...
— The Time of Roses • L. T. Meade
... exchange law for journalism, and acted as ed. of various periodicals. Among his best known poems are Lines to a Water-fowl, The Rivulet, The West Wind, The Forest Hymn, The Fringed Gentian, etc. His muse is tender and graceful, pervaded by a contemplative melancholy, and a love of solitude and the silence of the woods. Though he was brought up to admire Pope, and in his early youth imitated him, he was one of the first American poets to throw off his influence. He had a high sense of duty, was a prominent and patriotic citizen, and enjoyed the esteem ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... effect of a preposterous misfit. Johnson consulted with a thin-legged, short-skirted verger about the disposition of the party. The officiating clergy appeared distantly in the doorway of the vestry, putting on his surplice, and relapsed into a contemplative cheek-scratching that was manifestly habitual. Before the bride arrived Mr. Polly's sense of the church found an outlet in whispered criticisms of ecclesiastical architecture with Johnson. "Early Norman arches, eh?" ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... which has led from the lowest forms of life up to man, sees in progress the fundamental law of the universe, and thus admits the difference between earlier and later into the very citadel of its contemplative outlook. With its past and future history of the world, conjectural as it is, I do not wish to quarrel. But I think that, in the intoxication of a quick success, much that is required for a true understanding of the universe has been forgotten. Something of Hellenism, something, too, of ...
— Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays • Bertrand Russell
... the Poor Clares, which is a large brick building, covering, with its grounds, 13/4 acres, and which was built for the convent purposes in 1859, having been founded by Cardinal (then Father) Manning. The nuns, numbering about thirty, are vowed to the contemplative life of prayer and manual labour in the service of God, but do no teaching or nursing, and there are no lay sisters. The next opening on the south side of Cornwall Road is Kensington Park Road, in ...
— The Kensington District - The Fascination of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... socially. Submission, absolute and perpetual, to parents, to lord, to ancestors, to Fate, has been the ruling idea of each man's life. Controlled by such ideas, the easy-going, time-ignoring, dreaming, contemplative life—if you so choose to call it—of the Orient ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... proportion as thought prevails over sense: but in the healthy processes of the mind, a balance is constantly maintained between the impressions from outward objects and the inward operations of the intellect;—for if there be an overbalance in the contemplative faculty, man thereby becomes the creature of mere meditation, and loses his natural power of action. Now one of Shakespeare's modes of creating characters is, to conceive any one intellectual or moral faculty in morbid excess, and then to place himself, ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... is a place for eugenics in every type of religion. In practice, it will probably make an impression only on the dynamic religions,—those that are actually accomplishing something. Buddhism, for example, is perhaps too contemplative to do anything. But Christianity, above any other, would seem to be the natural ally of the eugenist. Christianity itself is undergoing a rapid change in ideals at present, and it seems impossible that this evolution should leave its adherents ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson
... sitting out on deck in contemplative silence enjoying his after-dinner smoke. Farther down were Grace and Veath. Suddenly turning in their direction, Hugh perceived that they were not there; nor were they anywhere in sight. He was pondering over their whereabouts, his eyes ...
— Nedra • George Barr McCutcheon
... narrative. And though his novel complies with that form more or less, and a number of events are marshalled in order, yet its constant tendency is to escape and evade the restrictions of a scenic method, and to present the story in a continuous flow of leisurely, contemplative reminiscence. ...
— The Craft of Fiction • Percy Lubbock
... eventually be found for the motions of the stars, the knowledge of the existence of those motions must always afford a new charm to the contemplative observer of the heavens, for they impart a sense of life to the starry system that would otherwise be lacking. A stagnant universe, with every star fixed immovably in its place, would not content the imagination or satisfy our longing for ceaseless activity. The majestic grandeur ...
— Curiosities of the Sky • Garrett Serviss
... punishment with which you can visit him; the only recompense you can award to my client. And for those damages she now appeals to an enlightened, a high-minded, a right-feeling, a conscientious, a dispassionate, a sympathizing, a contemplative jury of her ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... sometimes an old woman, and early in the morning whoever has the post collects the whole flock, drives it to a chosen feeding ground, spends the day there, and brings it back at night. It must be a contemplative life, and in dry weather pleasant. I think it would suit a philosopher if he could choose his days. In our Franconian village the gooseherd was a little boy, vastly proud of his job. Every morning, long before we were up, he would stride past ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... instruction he might have received. For instance, he had been to the Carmelite's school at ——, and instead of showing any aptitude for work, he had played truant with a keener delight than any of his school-fellows. His was an eminently contemplative nature, kindly and indolent, but proud and almost savage in its love of independence; religious, yet opposed to all authority; somewhat captious, very suspicious, and inexorable with hypocrites. The observances of the cloister inspired him with but little awe; and as a result ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... as they more readily do, in persons predisposed to nervous affections, although not insane, in times and in a society agitated by religious excitement, or in persons habitually contemplative and occupied with spiritual images and thoughts; if in moments of ecstatic emotion they should perceive, in addition to the images proper to such conditions, these circling flames, which is very likely to be the ...
— Myth and Science - An Essay • Tito Vignoli
... there, the votive offerings had fallen into decay, and the gold-leaf covering the Buddha was black and dilapidated by the passing of years, for there is no merit to be acquired in rebuilding or renovating a sacred place. From innumerable shrines, uncounted Buddhas looked out with the same long, contemplative eyes; in bronze, in jade, in white and black marble, in grey stone and gilded ebony, the passionless face of the great Peace looked out upon ...
— The Pointing Man - A Burmese Mystery • Marjorie Douie
... appeared to the cautious contemplative brother as one that was fraught with no ordinary danger, and he would have most willingly declined the prominent character allotted to him in the performance but for the importunate entreaty of his friends, who implored him, as he valued their blessing, not to slight such excellent advice. ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends - Scotland • Anonymous
... rushed off, leaving the three elder girls and Dr. Rylance standing in the hall, listlessly contemplative of Sir Tristram's dinted breast-plate, hacked by Roundhead ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... divert myself by seeing the wondrous variety of prospects, beasts, birds, fishes, insects, and vegetables, with which God has been pleased to enrich the several parts of this globe; a variety which, as it must give great pleasure to a contemplative beholder, so doth it admirably display the power, and wisdom, and goodness of the Creator. Indeed, to say the truth, there is but one work in his whole creation that doth him any dishonour, and with that I have long ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... Taking an axe, Ayrault hewed out a parallelogram about three feet by four and set it on end against the bank. The cold grey of morning was already colouring the east, and in the growing light Ayrault beheld a vision of Violet within the ice. The face was at about three fourths, and had a contemplative air. The hair was arranged as he had formerly seen it, and the thoughtful look was strongest in the beautiful grey eyes, which were more serious than of yore. Ayrault stood riveted to the spot and gazed. "I could have ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor
... thousand miles from anything that she and her father had ever known. And in her pocket there was no penny for rescue or escape. Over her life brooded powerfully Sylvester Hudson, with his sallow face and gentle, contemplative eyes. He had brought her to his home. Surely that was an honorable and generous deed. He had given her over to the care and protection of his wife and daughters. But why didn't Mrs. Hudson like it? Why did she tighten ...
— Hidden Creek • Katharine Newlin Burt
... I thought there was no one here. My dear Miss Wilder, you look contemplative; but I fancy it wouldn't do to ask the subject of your ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... fond of Staningley too: I brought you here to offer a petition in her behalf, that this may be her home as long as she lives, and—if it be not our home likewise—that I may often see her and be with her; for I fear she will be sorry to lose me; and though she leads a retired and contemplative life, she is apt to get low-spirited if left ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte
... she had the benefit of such masters as Grigoletti, Lipparini, Schiavoni, and Zandomeneghi. She early showed much originality, and after making thorough preliminary studies she began to follow her own ideas. She was of a mystical and contemplative turn of mind, and a great proportion of her work has been of a religious nature. Her pictures began to attract attention about 1847, and she had many commissions for altar-pieces and similar work. The church of Valdobbiadene, at Venice, contains "San ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement
... she taketh something to recreate nature, and soe goeth to the chapelle, hearinge the divine service and two lowe masses. From thence to dynner, during the tyme of whih she hath a lecture of holy matter (that is, reading from a religious book), either Hilton of Contemplative and Active Life, or some other spiritual and instructive work. After dynner she giveth audyence to all such as hath any matter to shrive unto her, by the space of one hower, and then sleepeth one quarter of an hower, and after she hath slept she ...
— Richard III - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... country. His untiring and patient observation of Nature is the secret of his power as a writer. He disdained nothing, for nothing seemed too small for him. Nature, in none of its phases, could appear insignificant to his fertile and mellow soul. When he could not soar in the high regions of contemplative philosophy, he stooped as low as the little child whose rosy cheek he patted, and who then became to him a teacher and a study. An insect crawling on a leaf,—a bit of grass bringing the joy of its short ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... with one of the walks of Eden. Yet it shows no gay foliage, nor "shade above shade a woody theatre," such as is seen on a mountain declivity. It is a simple shadowy walk—shadowy to richness, cool, tranquil, redolent of freshness. There the soul feels "private, inactive, calm, contemplative," linked to things that were and are not. The mellow hue of time, not yet stricken by decay, clothes the buildings of this college, which, compared with other edifices more steeped in maturity of years, occupies, as it were, a middle ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... standing at the door in a contemplative attitude, fancied that his master called him, and, coming up, ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke
... a fascinating personality. He is not socialistic and faithful, like the ant, for example: he is anarchistic, wild, temperamental, and fond of adventure. He is also contemplative by nature, like other philosophers. How many an evening, at midnight, when I have wanted a sandwich, I have found him and his friends standing still, lost in thought, by the sink. When I poke him up, he blinks with his ...
— The Crow's Nest • Clarence Day, Jr.
... of the age, set their wits to work in the imagination of improbable possibilities—-of odd accidents, as they term them; but to a reflecting intellect (like mine," I added, in parenthesis, putting my forefinger unconsciously to the side of my nose,) "to a contemplative understanding such as I myself possess, it seems evident at once that the marvelous increase of late in these 'odd accidents' is by far the oddest accident of all. For my own part, I intend to believe nothing henceforward that has anything of ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... interesting," commented Fairchilds, his contemplative gaze moving from the face of Mrs. Wackernagel to Tillie. "But," he questioned, "Mrs. Wackernagel, why are your daughters allowed to do what you think wrong and ...
— Tillie: A Mennonite Maid - A Story of the Pennsylvania Dutch • Helen Reimensnyder Martin
... faculty which was so freely developed in Gifted Hopkins had never manifested itself in Cyprian Eveleth, whose look and voice might, to a stranger, have seemed more likely to imply an imaginative nature. Cyprian was dark, slender, sensitive, contemplative, a lover of lonely walks,—one who listened for the whispers of Nature and watched her shadows, and was alive to the symbolisms she writes over everything. But Cyprian had never shown the talent or the ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... the tinker stroking a white cat, and appealing to her, every now and then, as his missus, for an opinion or a confirmation; and he thought that a curious sight. Speed-the-Plough was stretched at full length, with his boots in the rain, and his head amidst the tinker's pots, smoking, profoundly contemplative. The minutes seemed to be taken up alternately by the grey ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith |
