"Fatalism" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... necessary to point out that the antithesis is not a practical one, as we have got at present an England of ignoramuses who are also cowards and slaves, and extremely proud of it at that, because in school they are taught to submit, with what they ridiculously call Oriental fatalism (as if any Oriental has ever submitted more helplessly and sheepishly to robbery and oppression than we Occidentals do), to be driven day after day into compounds and set to the tasks they loathe by the men they hate and fear, as if this were ...
— A Treatise on Parents and Children • George Bernard Shaw
... great chasm lies between the teachings of these men and the beliefs of the common people. Only from a study of the epitaphs do we know what the average Roman thought and felt on this subject. A few years ago Professor Harkness, in an admirable article on "The Scepticism and Fatalism of the Common People of Rome," showed that "the common people placed no faith in the gods who occupy so prominent a place in Roman literature, and that their nearest approach to belief in a divinity was their recognition of fate," ...
— The Common People of Ancient Rome - Studies of Roman Life and Literature • Frank Frost Abbott
... old fellow, with the face of Henri Quatre, eagle nose, beard, and all, sat with his head sunken on his chest in mournful contemplation, and a fine-looking, black-haired, dragoon kind of youth with the wildest of eyes clung like grim death to a German helmet. The same expression of resigned fatalism was common to all. ...
— A Volunteer Poilu • Henry Sheahan
... speaking of the fatalism of the Turks, says that they always and everywhere leave the world as they found it. According to their own proverb, no grass grows again where the ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... astonishingly long time about it. As a matter of fact, he was discussing religion with the booking-office clerk, and had almost got his head through the hole in his excitement. When we dragged him away it was some time before he would talk of anything but the growth of an Oriental fatalism in modern thought, which had been well typified by some of the official's ingenious but perverse fallacies. At last we managed to get him to understand that we had made an astounding discovery. When ...
— The Club of Queer Trades • G. K. Chesterton
... has a straight part. He umpah umps with the conventional trombone fatalism. Whatever the tune, whatever the harmonies, trombone umpah umps regardless. Umpah ump is the soul of all things. Cadenzas, glissandos, arpeggios, chromatics, syncopations, blue melodies—these are the embroidery of sound. From year to year these ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... unquestionably true that thousands have turned aside to the attractions of spiritualism. A recent article in the Literary Supplement of the Times commenced with the statement that "Among the strange, dismaying things cast up by the tide of war are those traces of primitive fatalism, primitive magic, and equivocal divination which are within general knowledge." The writer of the article in question thinks that as we have taken a huge and lamentable step backwards in civilisation, we need not be surprised that we should also have receded in the direction of those primitive ...
— Science and Morals and Other Essays • Bertram Coghill Alan Windle
... in an early stage of his labours, and before the complete maturity of his powers, would probably have thrown off an error, the more to be regretted as it gives a colour to the prejudice which regards the doctrine of the invariability of natural laws as identical with fatalism. Mr Buckle also fell into another mistake which M. Comte avoided, that of regarding the intellectual as the only progressive element in man, and the moral as too much the same at all times to affect even the annual average of crime. M. Comte shows, on the contrary, a ...
— Auguste Comte and Positivism • John-Stuart Mill
... where no tribes lived, to acquire "merit," with no other company than that of their own pious contemplations. We did not believe in its existence, still we were searching for that monastery, driven onward by the blind fatalism which was our only guide through all these endless wanderings. As we were starving and could find no "argals," that is fuel with which to make a fire, we walked all night by the light of the moon, driving between us a single yak—for ...
— Ayesha - The Further History of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed • H. Rider Haggard
... also within him a secret fanaticism that was very old, a fatalism, obscure, and cruel, and strange, a lack of scruple that would have revolted almost any Englishman who could have understood it, an occasional childishness, rather Egyptian than Turco-Egyptian, and a quick and instinctive subtlety that came ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... resemblance to anything found in the Greek drama. On the other hand, there is a chorus, and there are dreams which take the place of oracles. There is also a further suggestion of the antique in the pervading fatalism ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... for me Vaness, or rather his philosophy, erat demonstrandum. I was philosophically in some distress just then. The microbe of fatalism, already present in the brains of artists before the war, had been considerably enlarged by that depressing occurrence. Could a civilization, basing itself on the production of material advantages, do anything but insure the desire for more and more material advantages? Could it promote progress ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... new master was gratifying to the people. But he never committed the folly of ordering any solemnity. He neither learned nor repeated any prayer of the Koran, as many persons have asserted; neither did he advocate fatalism, polygamy, or any other doctrine of the Koran. Bonaparte employed himself better than in discussing with the Imaums the theology of the children of Ismael. The ceremonies, at which policy induced him to be present, were to him, and to all who accompanied ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... nonscience, about humors, complexions, and animal spirits. Jack Brimblecombe, mere pulpit, about its being the visitation of God. Cary, mere despair, though he jested over it with a smile. Yeo, mere stoic fatalism, though he quoted Scripture to back the same. Drew, the master, had nothing to say. His "business was to sail the ship, ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... never tried to shelter under it, and stay there faithfully, as the best of people do. And even now I was not brought to such a happy attitude, although delivered by these little gleams of light from the dark void of fatalism, into which so many bitter blows had once been ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... out of mankind, and to bring them by Christ to everlasting salvation, as vessels made to honour." However it may be with others, Churchmen at all events have no right to sneer at Gordon's views on the doctrine of God's Sovereignty, or Fatalism, as he more ...
— General Gordon - A Christian Hero • Seton Churchill
... about him on his journeyings, and turned to such good purpose that he had seen a great deal. In doing so, he had simply obeyed the laws of his nature, and we have good reason to believe that he was, to some extent, a fatalist, but of an orthodox school of fatalism withal, that led him to rely upon himself and even upon Providence. He claimed that he was impelled, rather than drawn by his own volition, to journey as he did, and that he traversed the world like the locomotive, which does not direct itself, but is guided ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne
... the transition from the consular republic to the imperial was unquestionably a real social and political progress. And yet the Roman people, had they chosen, could have given a different direction to the developments of their constitution. There was Providence in the course of events, but no fatalism. ...
— The American Republic: Its Constitution, Tendencies, and Destiny • A. O. Brownson
... Whether it ever evoked any warmer dream or vision during those calm, cold, virgin-like spring nights, when even the moon and the greater planets retreated into the icy blue, steel-like firmament, I cannot say. Enough that this superstition began to be colored a little by fancy, and his fatalism somewhat mitigated by hope. Dreams of this kind did not tend to promote his efficiency in the communistic labors of the camp, and brought him a self-isolation that, however gratifying at first, soon debarred him the benefits of that hard practical ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... reckon things happen and you can't do 'em over again," observed the little seamstress, with the natural fatalism of the "poor white" ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... and absolute; that it was man's duty to follow where God's hand led; and, if God's hand led towards violent excitements and extraordinary vicissitudes, that it was not only futile, it was impious to turn another way. Fatalism is always apt to be a double-edged philosophy; for while, on the one hand, it reveals the minutest occurrences as the immutable result of a rigid chain of infinitely predestined causes, on the other, it invests the wildest incoherences of conduct or of circumstance with the sanctity of eternal ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... and all that enchanted coast? Or for the rains that poured their sudden and swift rivulets down the wooded slopes and filled the gorges that gutted some of the streets? Was it the love of nature, or a belief in fatalism, or sheer laziness, I wonder, that preserved to Monterey those washouts, from two to five feet in depth, that were sometimes in the very middle of the streets, and impassable save by an improvised ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... purpose: whilst I considered the possibility of escape, they looked only at the prospect of being dragged back with pinioned arms by the Amir's guard. Such is generally the effect of the vulgar Moslems' blind fatalism. ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton
... between those prodigious masses of sand. Sand was below our feet, sand in front and behind, sand on each side. A sudden blast would inevitably cover us with it for many feet. It was nervous work. Fatalism alone could have induced men, fully alive to the danger they were incurring, to venture into such a position. To add to our danger, the loaded camels frequently fell down, and we were compelled to take off their burdens to enable ...
— Saved from the Sea - The Loss of the Viper, and her Crew's Saharan Adventures • W.H.G. Kingston
... us to think some thoughts together; but these, when ripe for speech, were spoken in various languages. Those whose eyes twenty-five and more years before had seen "the glory of the coming of the Lord," saw in every present hindrance or help a dark fatalism bound to bring all things right in His own good time. The mass of those to whom slavery was a dim recollection of childhood found the world a puzzling thing: it asked little of them, and they answered with little, and yet it ridiculed their offering. Such a paradox they could not understand, ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois
... be admitted that the Kabyles, with a thousand faults, are far from the fatalism, the abuse of force and that merging of individualism which are found with the Islamite wherever he appears. Whence, then, have come these more humane tendencies, charitable customs and movements of compassion? There are respectable authorities who consider ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... this, I think, and nothing more—that, as Saduko and the others were Mameena's tools, and as all of them and their passions were Zikali's tools, so he himself was the tool of some unseen Power that used him and us to accomplish its design. Which, I suppose, is fatalism, or, in other words, all these things happened because they must happen. A poor conclusion to reach after so much thought and striving, and not complimentary to man and his boasted powers of free will; still, one to which many of us are often driven, especially if we have ...
— Child of Storm • H. Rider Haggard
... woods where in my boyhood I had spent hours and days of happiness. One last look I turned towards the scene of my late catastrophe ere I began to descend the mountain. The postboy, with the happy fatalism of his country, and a firm trust in the future, had established himself in the interior of the chaise, from which a blue curl of smoke wreathed upward from his pipe; the horses grazed contentedly by the roadside; and were I to judge from ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... Justice Holmes presented a dissenting opinion for himself and Justice Brandeis which contains a curious note of fatalism. He said: "If what I think the correct test is applied, it is manifest that there was no present danger of an attempt to overthrow the government by force on the part of the admittedly small minority who shared the defendant's views. It is said that this Manifesto was more than ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... early part of the century, people generally gave in. The stronger tide was called Providence. Perhaps there was a small degree of fatalism in it. So Mrs. Leverett acquiesced, and recalled the fact that she had promised Electa that Betty ...
— A Little Girl in Old Boston • Amanda Millie Douglas
... miracle. They, poor people, knew nothing of "sanitary reform," "sanitary precautions," "zymotics," "endemics," "epidemics," "deodorizers," or "disinfectants." They regarded disease with the apathy of creatures who felt it to be inseparable from humanity, and with the fatalism of despair. ...
— Ginx's Baby • Edward Jenkins
... sorceress, but also its helpful comrade; man is the passive clay which the great Potter moulded and modelled upon the Wheel of Time, and yet is bidden rage and strive, the adoring acquiescence of Eastern Fatalism mingling with the Western gospel of individual energy. And all this complex and manifold ethical appeal is conveyed in verse of magnificent volume and resonance, effacing by the swift recurrent anvil crash of its rhythm any suggestion ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... officers. In peace they can devote themselves entirely to their profession without other distractions; so that it benefits somewhat, as does the Catholic Church by the services of her celibate priesthood. And in active warfare it seems to me that such men must enjoy something of the fatalism of Islam. All is not lost, my dear fellow! I hear everywhere the greatest praise of your capacity and talents as an officer. So be brave, and throw the others as mere ballast behind you. You have a guiding star in your ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... painful degree, how limited are their powers; the high responsibility which is attached to free-will rises before them, and they shrink from the idea of trusting their own welfare to their own short-sighted reason alone. Most men, at such times, take refuge in a sort of fatalism; they stand inactive, until urged in this or that direction by the press of outward circumstances; or they rush blindly forward, under impatience of ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... that there should be such durability in those dainty materials: they express well the fatalism of the luxurious Moor, to whom the past and future were as nothing, and the transient hour all in all; yet they have outlasted him and his conqueror. The Spaniard, inglorious and decayed, is now but the showman to this magnificence; time ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham
... philosopher, are summed up in the formula, "Bear and forbear;" and he is said to have observed that "Man is but a pilot; observe the star, hold the rudder, and be not distracted on thy way." Both these schools of philosophy, however, passed into skepticism. Epicureanism became a material fatalism and a search for pleasure; while Stoicism ended in spiritual fatalism. But when the Gospel awakened the human heart to life, it was the Greek mind which gave ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... you: "Do not believe in fatalism; for then everything appearing inevitable, you will work at nothing, you will wallow in indifference, you will love neither riches, nor honours, nor glory; you will not want to acquire anything, you will believe yourself without merit as without power; no talent will be cultivated, ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire
... only abandonment, but the higher flame of self-renunciation. She wanted to do the best for him, and had not even the consolation of the knowledge that she had sacrificed herself for his advantage. All had been taken out of her hands! Yet with characteristic fatalism she did not feel rebellious. If it were ordained that she should, for fifty, perhaps sixty years, repent in sterility and ashes that first error of her girlhood, rebellion was, none the less, too far-fetched. If she rebelled, it would not be in spirit, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... contradictions, but at the first sight it seemed difficult. I had yet to learn that I was dealing with a type of the fanatic, and a representative of that type, moreover, who exemplified in his blood the fatalism of his ascendants. Yet the glimpse I had of the man was interesting. I began to understand him, and even to sympathise with him. He had foregone much for the sake of an ideal, and that was something. But just then I should like to have known exactly what ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson
... Executive of the legislative will, continues for his prescribed term, though he may have wholly lost the confidence of the representatives of the people in Congress. While this makes for stability in administration and keeps the ship of state on an even keel, yet it also leads to the fatalism of our democracy, and often the "native hue" of its resolution is thus "sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought." Take a striking instance. I am confident that after the sinking of the Lusitania, the United States would have entered the world war, if ...
— The Constitution of the United States - A Brief Study of the Genesis, Formulation and Political Philosophy of the Constitution • James M. Beck
... The Tomb of Mano Tomb of Sayid On the Death of His Mistress On Avarice The Battle of Sabla Verses to My Enemies On His Friends On Temper The Song of Maisuna To My Father On Fatalism To the Caliph Harun-al-Rashid Lines to Harun and Yahia The Ruin of Barmecides To Taher Ben Hosien The Adieu To My Mistress To a Female Cup-bearer Mashdud on the Monks of Khabbet Rakeek to His Female Companions ...
— Oriental Literature - The Literature of Arabia • Anonymous
... an attempt to found the religion of Christ on the doctrine of necessity, and to accommodate its truths, which suppose and require free agency in man, to a dark and appalling fatalism. But in a case like the present, in which metaphysical reasonings, however profound or conclusive, so far as they go, are at variance with practical truth, with consciousness, with the actual state of things, and with the unquestionable procedures of the ...
— On Calvinism • William Hull
... But he spoke them not only with his lips, but with his whole self. They were not out of keeping with his nature. There is no more desperate blood in the world's veins than that of the Celt when he is driven to bay or exasperated by passion. In him the reckless fatalism of the Asiatic is blended with the ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... will be overwhelmed. Nothing can save it! The water rises! rises! and any minute it may burst through! The Saints have mercy! All our things will be lost; but it is the will of God—we cannot fight against it." And Volodia crossed himself devoutly with Russian fatalism. ...
— Soap-Bubble Stories - For Children • Fanny Barry
... danger of unwavering expectancy, in that it is chiefly those who are early alarmed and turn vigorously to fight the disease under intelligent medical direction, who make the recoveries. Too serene a courage, too profound a confidence in occult forces, is only a form of fatalism and ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... destiny never degenerates into mere blind and helpless fatalism," responded the Afghan. "To do the right now suffices to give absolute trust in God for the hereafter. That is the key of destiny, and each man holds it in his ...
— Tales of Destiny • Edmund Mitchell
... The doctrine of Fatalism seems at first sight to be bound up in the acceptance of Lombroso's theory: but such is not the case. Lombroso himself declares that the type belongs to the born criminal only, and that the born criminal can be nothing more than an epileptic; criminality ...
— A Plea for the Criminal • James Leslie Allan Kayll
... life, is his cherished idea. But he, as much as anyone, has felt the usual (alas!) and bitter consequences of determinism; has seen the victim of the thought sit, as it were, with his hands tied; has seen the determinist sink into temporary fatalism, and has seen effort relaxed and ...
— Memoirs of Arthur Hamilton, B. A. Of Trinity College, Cambridge • Arthur Christopher Benson
... many generations, and that unless you can do that, it is idle to oppose one particular corollary, and so to make a revolution inevitable, instead of a peaceful development. To say that any change is impossible in the absolute sense, may be fatalism; but it is simple good sense, and therefore good science, to say that to produce any change whatever you must bring to bear a force adequate to the change. When a man's leg is broken, you can't expect to heal it by a bit of sticking-plaster; ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen
... it's due in part to their fatalism and their utter indifference to all human suffering. How much do you imagine the great province of the Pun-jab with over twenty million people and half a score rich towns has contributed to the ...
— Under the Deodars • Rudyard Kipling
... happened, was it not his duty to endeavor to repair the damage? Were not penances imposed on him in the confessional for every default? Luther is said to have been led into still deeper gloom by his study of the doctrine of predestination. True, but even this study did not lead Luther off into fatalism. It terrified him, because he studied that profound doctrine without a true perception of divine grace and the meaning of the Redeemer's work. However, this study did not at any time permanently affect his vigorous ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau
... pooling policy, inherited from McKinley, the fatalism of Russian inertia meant the failure of American intensity. When Russia rolled over a neighboring people, she absorbed their energies in her own movement of custom and race which neither Czar nor peasant could convert, or wished to convert, into any Western equivalent. In 1903 ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... of that too, sometimes," said Charlie, sitting down on the rock beside his companion, and looking at him in some perplexity, "but does not the view you take savour somewhat of fatalism, and seek to free us from responsibility in regard to ...
— Charlie to the Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne
... This fatalism, the certainty that nothing good can be expected now, the conviction that even the powerful god Shiva himself can neither appear nor help them are all deeply rooted in the minds of the old generation. As for the younger men, they receive their education in high schools and universities, learn by ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... believe that each man should stand upon his own feet or lean upon a state crutch? There is no state church in Canada. Then, what part does religion play? Is it a shadow, or a substance? Is it a refuge for the unfit and the weak to shift the responsibility for their own failure to the fatalism of the will of God; or is religion a terrible and dynamic force that compels right for right's sake independent of compromise? How does the Canadian live in his home? Is he beer-drinking, lethargic, ...
— The Canadian Commonwealth • Agnes C. Laut
... ascendancy over common sense. Though rather reticent about expressing his religious views, he is in many respects intensely religious. He may admit being superstitious and even boast about it, or declare himself to be a fatalist. Fatalism in the vocabulary of the soldier is just ...
— Over the Top With the Third Australian Division • G. P. Cuttriss
... indelicate." "Though this tragedy," says Bell, "must be allowed a very noble composition, it is highly reprehensible for exhibiting the chimeras of witchcraft, and still more so for advancing in several places the principles of fatalism. We would not wish to see young, unsettled minds to peruse this piece without proper ...
— Journeys to Bagdad • Charles S. Brooks
... and the closer one approaches the primitive realities, the nearer this kind of fatalism he comes. Looking on the naked face of life or the crude fact of death, it is obvious to all save the most frivolous that these things were meant to be so. As the Aryan saying has it, looking forward there are a dozen ways, looking backward on the way each ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... outside of New England) is that it cannot leave the moral government of the universe in the hands of divine Providence. I was willing to leave so many things which I could not control to the Deity, who probably could that she accused me of fatalism, and I was held to be little better than one of the wicked because I would not forecast the effects of what I did in the lives of others. I insisted that others were also probably in the hands of the somma sapienza e il primo amore, and that I was so little ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... a novel, who persuaded his "brother's sons" to murder their father by working on their fears, and urging on them the doctrine of fatalism. When the deed was committed, Montorio discovered that the young murderers were not his nephews, but his own sons.—Rev. C. R. Maturin, ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... it is another picture of that youth which we see—youth reduced to ineffectiveness by fatalism and by the egoism of the lyric nature which longs to gain dramatic freedom, but cannot achieve it. It is one of a series of portraits, wonderfully traced psychological studies of the Russian dreamers and incompatibles of last mid-century, of which the most moving figure is the hero of the earlier ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev
... entered the University of his native city, devoting himself first to jurisprudence, and occupying himself later with philosophical and aesthetical studies. In 1862 he gained the gold medal of the University by an essay on "Fatalism among the Ancients," which showed a surprising brilliancy of expression and maturity of thought; and soon after he passed his examination for the doctorate of philosophy with the highest distinction. It is told that the old poet Hauch, who was then Professor of AEsthetics at the University, ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... and indecencies take place, and that all restraint is at an end. The despatch states, futhermore[11], that the aristocrats remaining in Russia have lost all will and energy. They accept degradation or death with complete fatalism and do not even try to save their wives ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto
... from God, or dost thou use the brains and hands which God has given thee, and then pray to Him to bless thy work? In all things do the best of thy understanding and means, and then say Min Allah, for the end is with Him!' There is not a pin to choose in fatalism here between Muslim and Christian, the lazy, like Mohammed and Suleyman (one Arab the other Copt), say Min Allah or any form of dawdle you please; but the true Muslim doctrine is just what Yussuf laid down—'do all you can and be resigned to whatever be the result.' Fais ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... Claude. It was a proof of the degree to which she had dismissed him that when, a half-hour later, she heard a rustling in the vines behind her it never occurred to her that he might have come back. She knew already that he would never come back. The fatalism of her little soul left her none of those uncertainties which are safeguards against despair. She raised her head and looked; but she saw exactly the person ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... Allah," said the Turkish admiral to Lady Hester Stanhope, "but I have got two anchors astern," showing that, with all his fatalism, he did not despise what are technically called human means. So the reverend Archdeacon, going down for his sea-baths, might say, "I'm not quite sure they'll carry me safely, but it shall not be all misfortune—I'll take out some of ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... name of Fatalism is sometimes substituted for acquiescence, in criticisms of this stamp. In any such sense anybody is a fatalist who believes in a relation between cause and effect. If it is fatalism to assume that, given a certain chain of ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... things which impeded him, torturing himself with fears and regrets and fancies, until at last, in a calmer moment, he realized that he was working himself up into an absurd state of nerves over something which was done and could not now be helped. The man had an odd streak of fatalism in his nature—that will have come of his Southern blood—and it came to him now in his need. For the work upon which he was to enter with the morrow he had need of clear wits, not scattered ones; a calm judgment, not disordered ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... women who acted as dispensers to their lords first took the title Frouwa (Frau), and when, in its transition stage, the old heathenism had evolved into a religion of strong nature worship, overshadowed by fatalism, only thinly veneered by Christianity, the minds of the Christian converts of Scandinavia, like those of puzzled children, transferred to the Virgin Mary the attributes that had formerly been those of their "Lady"—Freya, ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang
... into long reveries from which Nadia found it difficult to arouse him. The kibitka rolled swiftly along the road. Yes, swiftly! Nicholas no longer thought of being so careful of his horse, and was as anxious to arrive at his journey's end as Michael himself. Notwithstanding his fatalism, and though resigned, he would not believe himself in safety until within the walls of Irkutsk. Many Russians would have thought as he did, and more than one would have turned his horse and gone back again, after a hare had crossed ...
— Michael Strogoff - or, The Courier of the Czar • Jules Verne
... be found with men in whose thoughts God is not, or to whose conceptions he is the distant, inactive Deity, not the near and ever-working Controller. I cannot admire the conduct of that man who when the bolt of sorrow falls, receives it upon the armor of a rigid fatalism, who wipes scarcely a tear from his hard, dry face, and says, "Well, it cannot be helped; things are so ordered." Below all this there is often a sulky, half-angry sentiment, as though the victim felt the blow, but ...
— The Crown of Thorns - A Token for the Sorrowing • E. H. Chapin
... some shipwrecked sailors incurred a similar danger. Such barbarities must, in the nature of things, be practised every where under a reign of terror, however humane or christianized the people may be—even the fatalism of the Turk would not be proof against it. In Spain they have been enacted in all their horrors (thanks to the quarantine laws) upon the unfortunate victims of yellow fever;[33] and we shall soon see them repeated amongst ourselves, unless the plain truth be promulgated by authority ...
— Letters on the Cholera Morbus. • James Gillkrest
... name, either as priests, kings, or later on as judges. We may also note by the way that judgment can be given without belief in free arbitration, as is shown by the Mahometan fatalists and the judgments of Haroun-al-Raschid, for example. In fact, fatalism logically excludes the idea of free-will, for if everything is absolutely predetermined, the thoughts, resolutions and acts of man are also predetermined, which ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... Lee had ceased to take refuge during the bombardments. The fatalism of the Front had got her. She would die or live according to the great plan, and nothing could change that. She did not greatly care which, except for her work, and even that she felt could be carried on ...
— The Amazing Interlude • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... indelibility of character, and proclaims that the Ethiopian may as soon be expected to change his skin or the leopard his spots as the man accustomed to do evil may learn to do well. That dreary fatalism which binds the effects of a dead past on a man's shoulders, and forbids him to hope that anything will obliterate the marks of 'what once hath been,' is in violent contradiction to the large hope brought into ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... longed to set sail for this golden gleam. Be the old legend true or false, it is certain that to this day the northern Mujik shows an even more marked religious enthusiasm than his brother of the central governments. Fanaticism, mysticism, and fatalism go ever hand in hand in Northern Russia. The Empire of the Tsars being so vast in area and so embracive of races affords space for all forms of belief, or want of belief, within her boundaries. All creeds are represented, from the pagan Samoyede of the tundras to the ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various
... more thoroughly have unfitted the modern youth for getting on: it hardly needed the scribbled pages on the desk to complete the hopelessness of Ralph Marvell's case. He had accepted the fact with a humorous fatalism. Material resources were limited on both sides of the house, but there would always be enough for his frugal wants—enough to buy books (not "editions"), and pay now and then for a holiday dash to the great centres ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... ground in a paroxysm of madness, seemed to have something of diabolic origin. A story was told of a demon ancestress of the Angevin princes: "From the devil they came, and to the devil they will go," said the grim fatalism of the day. ...
— Henry the Second • Mrs. J. R. Green
... lee. In his lawless and desperate past he had taken many a fall with fortune; he was accustomed to weigh the danger of perilous alternatives; he knew what it was to hazard everything on his own vigilance and skill, and to bear with a sailor's fatalism the throw of those dread dice on which his own life had been so often staked. But to stake Madge's life! Madge, whom he loved so dearly! Madge, for whom he would have died! And yet there was something ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... from her several hours afterwards, he had almost recovered the casual gaiety which had become his habit of mind. Life was too short either to wonder or to regret, he had once remarked, and a certain easy fatalism had softened so far the pricks ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... seem to some persons no better than fatalism. But, in truth, there are two popular ways of reading the history of events between 1789 and 1794, and each of them seems to us as bad as the other. According to one, whatever happened in the Revolution was good and admirable, because it happened. According to the other, ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 1 of 3) - Essay 1: Robespierre • John Morley
... prejudices, in matters which neither of them understand, seem to me, between ourselves, indefensible. He to whom God has intrusted a child, and an only child at that, must employ for her preservation all the means that God has made available, and not become careless of them through fatalism or self-sufficiency. If writing tires you, ask your mother to send us news. Moreover, it would seem to me very desirable if one of your friends could be prevailed upon to go to you until you are better. Whether a doctor can help you or not—forgive me, but you cannot judge of that by your ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke
... greater rapidity. Never did weaknesses more quickly engender faults,—faults crimes,—crimes punishment. That retributive justice which God has implanted in our very acts, as a conscience more sacred than the fatalism of the ancients[1], never manifested itself more unequivocally; never was the law of morality illustrated by a more ample testimony, or avenged more mercilessly. Thus the simple recital of these two ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... Englishman, tall, fair-haired, and well built. He possessed, however, a forehead unnecessarily intellectual; and a sparkle of more than mere animal spirits lurked in the depths of his dark brown eyes. An observer would also have noticed that his mouth and chin had something of the stern and sad look of fatalism that one sees in the pictures of Rossetti and Burne-Jones. He had the unmistakable public-school and University hall-mark, and if he had been fairly liked at Eton, at Oxford, where (as Mr. Max Beerbohm so rightly says) the nonsense knocked out ...
— The Twelfth Hour • Ada Leverson
... Shakespeare, Moliere, Corneille, Schiller, Madame de Stael, and George Sand? It is because M. Zola, profound analyst and charming narrator, even more forcibly than Musset breaks the aesthetic synthesis by the absence of morality in his writings. His fatalism arrests the flight of that which would be great; he corrupts in the germ wonderful creative powers! M. Zola's great lack lies in his considering in man his physical nature only. Between mind and matter he holds a magnifying lantern full upon the lowest molecules, ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... forgot that it was he—the man before your eyes—who had gone through these things. I did not envy him his devotion to Kurtz, though. He had not meditated over it. It came to him, and he accepted it with a sort of eager fatalism. I must say that to me it appeared about the most dangerous thing in every way he had ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... Fatalism being their mother's last argument and always final, the children gave up. They let her go. More, they prepared for her so elaborate a wardrobe that the poor soul had had no excuse to purchase anything abroad. ...
— The Street of Seven Stars • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... were current, which were asserted to have been delivered hundreds of years previously. They had a most pernicious effect upon the mind of the vulgar, as they induced a belief in fatalism. By taking away the hope of recovery—that greatest balm in every malady—they increased threefold the ravages of the disease. One singular prediction almost drove the unhappy people mad. An ancient couplet, preserved for ages by tradition, foretold, that in the year 1630 ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... he is angry, pleased when he is quiescent, and ready to abandon meekly their homes when he renders them insupportable by his furious outbursts. Yet these people never fail to return and risk the ever-present chances of death and destruction. And little can we blame them for their fatalism, when we gaze upon the glorious views that reveal themselves at this spot, whence Naples rising proudly from the sea, the rocky islands of Ischia and Capri, the aerial heights of Monte Sant' Angelo and all the features of the placid bay are seen spread ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... fatalism: insight into temperament. Fatalists believe that your life is arranged for you beforehand from without; willy-nilly, you MUST act so. I only believe that in this jostling world your life is mostly determined by your own character, in its interaction with the characters of ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... measure, when pain is accepted and met in the way in which Christ accepted and met His pain, not in the spirit of useless and wild rebellion against the laws of the universe, nor in that of a blind, fatalistic, and unintelligent fatalism, which calls itself resignation. We may, hence, learn to look beyond and behind pain to that great law of perfection through suffering which takes effect, as it were, spontaneously in lower forms of life; but which, in the realm of the ...
— Gloria Crucis - addresses delivered in Lichfield Cathedral Holy Week and Good Friday, 1907 • J. H. Beibitz
... the better fatalism; and the closer one approaches the primitive realities, the nearer this kind of fatalism he comes. Looking on the naked face of life or the crude fact of death, it is obvious to all save the most frivolous that these things were meant to be so. As the ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... enthrallment, to descend to cold and sober reality, to remember he was a clerk, his companion a shop-girl, rather than a Prince disguised as Calander esquiring a Princess dedicated to Fatal Enchantment—that Kismet was a quaint fallacy, one with that whimsical conceit of Orient fatalism which assigns to each and every man his Day of Days, wherein he shall range the skies and plumb the abyss of his Destiny, alternately ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... script of nervousness or of hesitation. He had carried out his Orders, he saw clearly that the path which he had trod was leading him to the end of his journey, but he made no complaint. He was a Latin, and to the last possessed that loftiness of spirit wedded to sombre fatalism which is the heritage of the Latins. He was at war with his kindred of Italy and France, and with the English among whom he had been brought up, and whom he loved. He was their enemy by accident of birth, but ...
— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone
... mechanical premises suggested by Hume. 'They let loose instinct as an indiscriminatory bandog to guard them against his conclusions; they tugged lustily against the logical chain by which Hume was so coldly towing them and the world into bottomless abysses of atheism and fatalism.' To save themselves from materialism they invented Intuitions, and thereby incurred the wrath of orthodox Utilitarianism, which was rigidly empirical. They were, however, accepted in England, where any haven ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... fatalism which hitherto had kept them on their difficult path was shattered; the masses would no longer allow themselves to be held down in stupid resignation. Men who all their lives had plodded their accustomed ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... In that spirit of fatalism to which I have alluded as pervading current literature, it is the fashion to speak even of war and slavery as means of human progress. But war, which is the opposite of association, can aid progress only when it prevents further war or breaks down antisocial ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... which appeared fundamentally unreasonable, in this conviction that the bad could not be bettered by reforms of detail, there was more danger to society than in the crass indifference of the selfish and the unreflecting. When the natural leaders of society avow that they despair of the future, fatalism spreads like a contagious blight among the rank and file, until even discontent is numbed into silence. Nor does the evil end here. The idealists pay for their contempt of the real, not merely with their fortunes and their lives, but, worse still, with their intellectual ...
— Medieval Europe • H. W. C. Davis
... afflictions of the people of Palestine. Neglect and ignorance and dirt and the plague of crawling flies spread the germs of disease from eye to eye, and the people submit to it with pathetic and irritating fatalism. It is hard to persuade these poor souls that the will of Allah or Jehovah in this matter ought not to be accepted until after it has been questioned. But the light of true and humane religion is spreading ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke
... temper. The history of the East is a strange combination of drive and quiescence; its more vigorous races have had their periods of conquest and fierce mastery, but sooner or later what they have conquered has conquered them and they have accepted, with a kind of inevitable fatalism, the pressure of forces which they were powerless to subdue to their own weakening purposes. They have populated their lands to the limit and accepted the poverty which a dense population without scientific resource, on a poor soil and in a trying climate, inevitably ...
— Modern Religious Cults and Movements • Gaius Glenn Atkins
... of the term, he certainly is, but it is of the earlier type. Cyrenaic would be a juster epithet, the "carpe diem" doctrine of the poem is too gross and sensual to have commended itself to the real Epicurus. Intense fatalism, side by side with complete agnosticism, this is the keynote of the poem. Theoretically incompatible, these two "isms" are in practice ...
— Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam and Salaman and Absal • Omar Khayyam and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... personal influence in order to avoid civil bloodshed. [Sidenote: Caius compared with Tiberius.] The very dream which Caius told to the people shows that his brother's spell was still on him, and his telling it, together with his impetuous oratory and his avowed fatalism, militates against the theory that Tiberius was swayed by impulse and sentiment, and he by calculation and reason. But no doubt he profited by experience of the past. He had learned how to bide his time, and to think generosity ...
— The Gracchi Marius and Sulla - Epochs Of Ancient History • A.H. Beesley
... are generally careful, and watch out for the crocodiles. Those who have been devoured by those reptiles have always been evil, and were so punished by God for their sins. Mas says (p. 79), that this fatalism must have been imported ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 40 of 55 • Francisco Colin
... on earth his friend, went and sat beyond the curtains in the smaller, outer room, straining his ears to catch the conversation and wondering what tragedy the gods might have in store. As gladiator his philosophy was mixed of fatalism, cynical irreverence, a semi-military instinct of obedience, short-sightedness and self-will. He reckoned Marcia no better than himself because she, too, was born in slavery—and Pertinax not vastly better ...
— Caesar Dies • Talbot Mundy
... imperious necessity, inexorable necessity, iron necessity, adverse necessity; fate; what must be. destiny, destination; fatality, fate, kismet, doom, foredoom, election, predestination; preordination, foreordination; lot fortune; fatalism; inevitableness &c adj.; spell &c 993. star, stars; planet, planets; astral influence; sky, Fates, Parcae, Sisters three, book of fate; God's will, will of Heaven; wheel of Fortune, Ides of March, Hobson's choice. last shift, last ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... mind, which, upon the one pressing point, feverishly hurries into new, and all possible channels of thought, requires this pervading absolutism. It is the Erynnis of a bygone creed, in a renovated form of persecuting fatalism, brought to sport with the daily incidents and ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... had been reinforced. Who knows? The best laid plans are often thwarted by the merest trifles,—an insignificant puddle, a jingling canteen. This game of war is a hit or miss game, after all. A certain fatalism is bred thereby, and it is well to set out with a stock of that article. So our resolute advance became a forced reconnaissance, greatly to the chagrin of the younger and more ardent spirits. We found out exactly where the enemy was, and declined to have anything further ...
— The Creed of the Old South 1865-1915 • Basil L. Gildersleeve
... own sophisms—that moral is better, viewed aright, than volumes of homilies. But here I must pause for one moment, to bid the reader mark, that that event which confirmed Aram in the bewildering doctrines of his fatalism, ought rather to inculcate the Divine virtue—the foundation of all virtues, Heathen or Christian—that which Epictetus made clear, and Christ sacred—FORTITUDE. The reader will note, that the answer to the reasonings that probably convinced the mind of Aram, and blinded him to his crime, ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Eutropius. It was, perhaps, the presence of something of the same quality that led him to give the preference, among the numerous histories of the French Revolution, to Mignet, though, in putting him into my hands, he cautioned me against that dangerous spirit of fatalism, which, making man the unconscious instrument of an irresistible necessity, leaves him no real responsibility for evil ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... change now wrought in the household arrangements been produced; and in this way had Midwinter's victory over his own fatalism—by making Allan the daily occupant of a room which he might otherwise hardly ever have entered—actually favored the fulfillment of the Second Vision of ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... impressed and subdued, opposite to her in the shifting universe of the cab, which was moving away from the empty and silent home. Florrie was being thrown back out of luxury into her original hovel, and was accepting the stroke with the fatalism of the young and of the poor. And one day Hilda and her mother and Florrie would be united again in the home now deserted, whose heavy key was in the ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... the shouting, I suppose?" Again she shrugged. The fatalism of her training spoke in that shrug, and the necessity for taking everything as it comes—since everything is bound ...
— The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... ardent disciple of Ravaisson and the author of a rather important philosophical work Du fondement de l'Induction (1871), who in his view of things endeavoured "to substitute everywhere force for inertia, life for death, and liberty for fatalism."[Footnote: Lachelier was born in 1832, Ravaisson in 1813. Bergson owed much to both of these teachers of the Ecole Normale Superieure. Cf. his memorial address on Ravaisson, who died in 1900. ...
— Bergson and His Philosophy • J. Alexander Gunn
... an unusually large crop of flax or barley, when a single night may make his labours utterly profitless? Even in midsummer the blighting frost may fall: nature seems to take a cruel pleasure in thwarting him: he is fortunate only through chance; and thus a sort of Arab fatalism and acquiescence in whatever happens, takes possession of him. His improvidence is also to be ascribed to the same cause. Such fearful famine and suffering as existed in Finland and Lapland during the winter of 1856-7 might no doubt have been partially prevented, but no human power ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... very light and empty, although so heavy that he could not lift it from the pillow. But he managed to shift his gaze from the window until it rested upon a man's face—a gaunt, impassive brown face illuminated by steady and thoughtful eyes, filled with that mystic, unshakable spirit of fatalism that is the real Genius of the eastern peoples. The head itself stood out with almost startling distinctness against the background of pure white. It was swathed with an immaculate white turban. The thin, stringy brown neck ran into a loose surtout ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... professor at the Virginia Military Institute of Lexington. Here he was known as a rigid Presbyterian, and a "fatalist," if it be fatalism to believe that "what will be will ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge
... likely he was shadowed; and to a certainty the Emperor would be so. Still, what could save the latter from a pistol-shot? Yet, here he was, sauntering about the badly lighted streets of a town where his kenspeckle figure was familiar to every inhabitant. Call this fatalism if you will; but these were not the acts of a coward. I told this story to a friend who was well 'posted' in the club gossip of ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... to whom he could have spoken, no one who would not have greeted him with interest, even with gratification. And yet he had never been so deeply conscious of the gulf which lay between the oriental fatalism of his life and ways and the placid self-assurance of these westerners, so well-content with the earth upon which their feet fell. He had judged with perfect accuracy the place which he held in their ...
— The Great Prince Shan • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Religious Teachers and Doctrines.—The priestly class. Shamanism. Theocracies. Secret orders. Initiations. Diviners. Augurs and prophets. Doctrines of soul. Fatalism. ...
— Anthropology - As a Science and as a Branch of University Education in the United States • Daniel Garrison Brinton
... aimed at by the poet. 9. Compare with Despair Bunyan's Giant Despair and the Man in the Iron Cage. 10. Trace the sophistries by which Despair works in the mind of the Knight, e.g. the arguments from necessity (fatalism), humanity, cowardice, discouragement and disgust on account of his past failures, dread of the future, of God's justice, and the relief of death. 11. Does Despair show knowledge of the Knight's past? 12. With what powerful truths does Una meet the arguments ...
— Spenser's The Faerie Queene, Book I • Edmund Spenser
... fatalism of his nation, had resigned himself in advance to whatever might happen and drove straight onward with his eyes impassibly fixed upon the horses. Not so with Peppino; the wily and well-posted Italian was constantly on the alert, scanning every thicket, clump of trees or turn ...
— Monte-Cristo's Daughter • Edmund Flagg
... consternation to this frightful profession of fatalism by which Surajah Dowlah sought to decline the responsibility of his wicked acts. In the meantime he read the letter which I had ...
— Athelstane Ford • Allen Upward
... overworked wife and mother has no social life, except perhaps attendance at the services at the country church to which the family rides in a springless wagon. Such families see their neighbors prosper without attempting to discover the secret for themselves. Blank fatalism possesses them. They do not realize that they could prosper. New methods of cultivation, they think, are not for them since they have ...
— The New South - A Chronicle Of Social And Industrial Evolution • Holland Thompson
... stocks; and for customers, their friends and neighbors, who looked forward to commercial ruin, which each day brought nearer to them all. Outwardly they were placid enough, but it was not the placidity of content. It bespoke rather a dumb, disciplined acceptance by those who have had fatalism literally thrust on them as a doctrine ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... the power of will, which annihilates the sickly, sentimental doctrine of fatalism,—you must, but can't, you ought, ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... pious act; he who resists commits sacrilege, while he who blames others for it is impious; for love legitimizes itself by itself. Such a theory naturally led her to a sensual ideality, and her heroes rose to the highest phase of fatalism and voluptuousness; this impelled her to protest against the ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... was bold. The trembling had ceased. Now that he faced nemesis the strength of native fatalism came to his rescue, bolstering up the pride that every uncontaminated Nyamwezi owns. He was not more than seventeen years old, but he stood there at last like a ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... means, count—indeed, that would be an exaggeration of fatalism. I rely greatly on your sagacity and on the vigilance of your servants, count. Let them watch the stupid populace—see to it that faux freres always attend the meetings of my enemies, and whenever they inform you of conspiracies against myself, why, the malefactors ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... this: it is a study of the Russian suicide epidemic, which rarely presents anything poetic or pathetic, but almost always results, on the contrary, from ambition, narrowness, with a mixture of mysticism or fatalism. You will object that my study is not successful. Possibly not; but I wished to point you to the right and fitness of investigating purely ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various
... and the sun and have an opportunity to think. She soothed her uneasiness at the thought of Madame Vauchelet's disappointment by promising herself to call to-morrow. She sat watching the boats and the water and the gay banks of the river with a sense of relief, and a curious sort of fatalism, partly suggested perhaps, by the persistent movement of the boat, and the interminable succession of new scenes, all bubbling with human life, full of the traces of past events. One layer of consciousness was busily engaged in thinking out the practical considerations of the ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... abide ... ye cannot be saved,' The belief that God wills anything is a reason for using all means to effect it, not for folding our hands and saying, 'God will do it, whether we do anything or not.' The line between fatalism and Christian reliance on God's will is clearly drawn in ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... best thing for us that we should go cheerfully whither the Great Hand guides us. They had not a dogma in common, these fellows in misfortune, but they held the intimate, deep-lying spirit, the calm, essential fatalism which is the world-old framework of religion, with fresh crops of dogmas growing like ephemeral lichens ...
— A Desert Drama - Being The Tragedy Of The "Korosko" • A. Conan Doyle
... girl he meant to marry at Newlyn. To her, at least, he had kept faithful enough; she had been the guiding-star of his life for hard upon a year of absence; not one morning, not one night, in fair weather or foul, had he omitted to pray God's blessing upon her. A fatalism, which his Luke Gospel tenets did not modify, was strong in the sailor. He had seen death often enough in his business; and his instincts told him, apart from all religious teaching, that those who died ripe for salvation were but few. Every man appeared ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts |
