"Sceptic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... shall go on warring in some Russian body till all falsehood is swept out of the world. The modern civilization is false, but a new revelation shall come out of Russia. Ha! you say nothing. You are a sceptic. I respect your philosophical scepticism, Razumov, but don't touch the soul. The Russian soul that lives in all of us. It has a future. It has a mission, I tell you, or else why should I have been moved to do this—reckless—like a ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... was this ditty of Tradition's days, Which to the dead a lingering fame conveys In song, where fame as yet hath left no sign Beyond the sound whose charm is half divine; Which leaves no record to the sceptic eye, But yields young history all to harmony; A boy Achilles, with the centaur's lyre In hand, to teach him to surpass his sire. For one long-cherish'd ballad's simple stave Rung from the rock, or ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... been an easy, and a popular expedient, of late years, to deny the personal or real existence of men and things whose life and condition were too much for our belief. This system—which has often comforted the religious sceptic, and substituted the consolations of Strauss for those of the New Testament—has been of incalculable value to the historical theorists of the last and present centuries. To question the existence of Alexander the Great, would be a more excusable act, than to believe in that of ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... about Cronus was the stumbling-block of the orthodox Greek, the jest of the sceptic, and the butt of the early Christian controversialists. Found among Bushmen or Australians the narrative might seem rather wild, but it astonishes us still more when it occurs in the holy legends of Greece. Our explanation ...
— Custom and Myth • Andrew Lang
... tragedy has its compensations for some one. The pitiable arrival of Mr Levinski at "The Duke's Head," unrecognized and with his fur coat slightly ruffled, might make a sceptic of the most devout optimist, and yet Eustace Merrowby can never look back upon that evening without a sigh of thankfulness; for to him it was the beginning of his career. The story has often been told since—in about a dozen weekly papers, half a dozen daily papers and three dozen provincial papers—but ...
— The Holiday Round • A. A. Milne
... was a happy undergraduate." (Audrey could not imagine Langley Wyndham ever being an undergraduate; it seemed to her that he must always have been a Master of Arts.) "I knew the real Flaxman Reed, and he was as logical a sceptic as you or I. There was an epidemic of ideas in our time, and the poor fellow was frightened, so he took it—badly. Of course he made up his mind that he was going to die, and he was horribly afraid of dying. So instead of talking about his interesting ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... eies as big as a bason."[1] Scot, however, was one of a very small minority in his opinion as to the carnal-mindedness of such a belief. He in his day, like those in every age and country who dare to hold convictions opposed to the creed of the majority, was a dangerous sceptic; his book was publicly burnt by the common hangman;[2] and not long afterwards a royal author wrote a treatise "against the damnable doctrines of two principally in our age; whereof the one, called Scot, an Englishman, is not ashamed in public print to deny that there can be such a thing ...
— Elizabethan Demonology • Thomas Alfred Spalding
... cried a lucid, rather sallow little man that had sat quietly smiling and listening. "My name, let me tell you, is Atheist, sir; and Christian was formerly a very near neighbour of an old friend of my family's—Mr. Sceptic. They lived, sir—at least in those ...
— Henry Brocken - His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance • Walter J. de la Mare
... all on the side of his adopted country, which in his eyes had no equal in the world. It was amusing to hear him speak of his visits to Europe: to England only did he cede the right even of comparison; and on the subject of our wines he was quite a sceptic, although he had dined at the best tables, and spoke most warmly of his entertainers. He protested against the wines of England being at all comparable to those of America; nay, I remember he was heretic enough to deny us ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power
... answer them or not. The task of the theologian is a most important one—whether or not it be, as has been lately said,[4] "the noblest of all the tasks which it is given to the human mind to pursue." None but a sciolist will depreciate such a task; and none but a sceptic will doubt the value of the conclusions which may be thus reached. But all this is quite consistent with our position. The welfare of the soul is not involved in such matters as I have mentioned. A man is not good or bad, spiritual or unspiritual, according to the view he takes of them. Men may ...
— Religion and Theology: A Sermon for the Times • John Tulloch
... sighs they ne'er were chilled, By sceptic spell were never stilled. Take me to that far-off shore, Where lovers meet to part no more. There doubt and fear and sin are o'er; The star of love shall set ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... supernatural, to perform daily miracles, and to keep alive that mythopoeic faculty which is so essential for the imagination. But in the English Church a man succeeds, not through his capacity for belief, but through his capacity for disbelief. Ours is the only Church where the sceptic stands at the altar, and where St. Thomas is regarded as the ideal apostle. Many a worthy clergyman, who passes his life in admirable works of kindly charity, lives and dies unnoticed and unknown; but it is sufficient for some shallow ...
— Intentions • Oscar Wilde
... often been pointed out, the ceremony was in all its details—even to the sponsors, the wrapping a garment about the baptised, the baptismal fee, the feast—precisely the same as when a child was baptised. Magius, who is no sceptic, relates from his own experience an instant of this sort, where a certain bishop stood sponsor for two bells, giving them both his own name—William. (See his De ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... through. Thus his life exactly spans the interval between the old world and the new. His family, which belonged to the magistracy of Grenoble, preserved the living tradition of the eighteenth century. His grandfather was a polite, amiable, periwigged sceptic after the manner of Fontenelle, who always spoke of 'M. de Voltaire' with a smile 'melange de respect et d'affection'; and when the Terror came, two representatives of the people were sent down to Grenoble, with the result that Beyle's father was pronounced (with a hundred and fifty ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... for the first time by the coincidence. "It is the photograph of that apparition which I have seen. Very sweet. Most interesting. A little cloudy naturally. . . . Mr. Renouard! I hope you are not a sceptic. It's so consoling ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... by four brethren, who were shortly reinforced by Dr. J.P. Vanderkemp, a native of Holland, a man of rare gifts and dauntless courage. Successively scholar, cavalry officer, and physician, he was for some years a sceptic, but being converted through the drowning of his wife and child, and his own narrow escape from death, he commenced the earnest study of the Bible and the Eastern languages, and gained such wonderful proficiency in the latter, ...
— Robert Moffat - The Missionary Hero of Kuruman • David J. Deane
... which we call nowadays the spirit of the age, when he said that "every age has a kind of universal genius." He had also a just notion of that in which he lived; for he remarks, incidentally, that "all knowing ages are naturally sceptic and not at all bigoted, which, if I am not much deceived, is the proper character of our own." It may be conceived that he was even painfully half-aware of having fallen upon a time incapable, not merely of a great poet, but perhaps of any poet at all; ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... the Italian princes of the later middle ages and the early renaissance, of the stamp of Fiiipo Maria Visconti. El Motaddid was a poet and a lover of letters, who was also a poisoner, a drinker of wine, a sceptic and treacherous to the utmost degree. Though he waged war all through his reign he very rarely appeared in the field, but directed the generals, whom he never trusted, from his "lair'' in the fortified palace, the Alcazar of Seville. He killed with his own hand one ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... ever met with any such absurd creature, or conversed with a man, who had no opinion or principle concerning any subject, either of action or speculation. This begets a very natural question; What is meant by a sceptic? And how far it is possible to push these philosophical principles of ...
— An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding • David Hume et al
... everyone present be satisfied that he was not doing any of the things himself—too anxious, I sometimes thought, for frequently he would interfere with the progress and development of what was going on by insisting that some sceptic or other should come around and take hold of his hands and feet to be sure he was not doing anything himself. At times, he would push his chair back and move right away from the table when things were moving on it, and ask those furthest from ...
— Genuine Mediumship or The Invisible Powers • Bhakta Vishita
... renewing itself in detail towards each successive thesis that offers, and you can no more kill it off by logic than yon can kill off obstinacy or practical joking. This is why it is so irritating. Your consistent sceptic never puts his scepticism into a formal proposition,—he simply chooses it as a habit. He provokingly hangs back when he might so easily join us in saying yes, but he is not illogical or stupid,—on the contrary, he often impresses us by his intellectual ...
— The Meaning of Truth • William James
... which he had seen, which he had touched, which he believed as he believed in existence, and he had come to love this truth precisely because he believed it. There was in his face, therefore, such a power of convincing as truth itself has. And Vinicius, who had been a sceptic, who did not wish to yield to the charm of the old man, yielded, however, to a certain feverish curiosity to know what would flow from the lips of that companion of the mysterious "Christus," and what that teaching was of which Lygia and ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... France, whom it was alleged, when in a state of mental incapacity, was induced by a priest named Holdstock to make a testament of his property in favour of the Church of Rome, and of certain charities favoured by that church. It was given in evidence that the man had been a sceptic nearly all his life, hated priests, and was especially prejudiced against the peculiar disposition of his property, which the priests alleged that he had actually made upon his death-bed. A Roman Catholic physician, one Gasquet, had called in the priest. It appeared on the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... happened in the English "Men of the Time" for 1856, and which led to a serious lawsuit against the publishers. The printer had mixed the biographies of the Bishop of Oxford and Robert Owen the Socialist in such a way that Bishop Wilberforce was called "a sceptic as it regards religious revelation." The mistake occurred in locking up the forms. Doubtless both biographies had been approved by their subjects, but apparently no proof was read after the fatal telescoping of the ...
— The Booklover and His Books • Harry Lyman Koopman
... friendship than had these two men for one another. Their mental climates suited; they were akin, yet had strong differences. Perhaps in the quickness of their mutual attraction Frenchman recognised Frenchman. But Ainger was the French Huguenot and du Maurier the French sceptic. Both had mercurial perceptions, and exercised them on much the same objects. Both were wits and humorists, but Ainger was more of a wit than a humorist, and du Maurier was more of a humorist than a ...
— George Du Maurier, the Satirist of the Victorians • T. Martin Wood
... his mind continually fixed on the Almighty Judge and an eternal reward. And hence he acquired their contempt of external circumstances, their fortitude, their tranquillity, their inflexible resolution. But not the coolest sceptic or the most profane scoffer was more perfectly free from the contagion of their frantic delusions, their savage manners, their ludicrous jargon, their scorn of science, and their aversion to pleasure. Hating tyranny with a perfect hatred, he had nevertheless ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... years ago in an edition of Men of the Time (1856), where the entry relating to Samuel Wilberforce, Bishop of Oxford, got mixed up with that of Robert Owen, the Socialist, with the result that the bishop was stated to be "a confirmed sceptic as regards revealed religion, but a believer in Spiritualism.'' It was this kind of blunder which suggested the formation of cross- readings, that were once ...
— Literary Blunders • Henry B. Wheatley
... application was too close to be resisted; but the same sceptic (who, by-the-bye, was only a low country merchant, elevated by purchase to the dignity of a Highland laird) was seen to shrug his shoulders, and hear to make some sneering remarks on the days of second-sights and such superstitious nonsense being past. ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... "I hope that what I said then had no weight with you; for they were not faults, the things I spoke of: they were simply peculiarities of his position. If I had known he wished to marry you I'd never have alluded to them. I think I said that as regards that position he was rather a sceptic. It would have been in your power ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... was in theory not averse to Republicanism, but the accusations are false as to his being a sceptic or a deist, as his own dying apology attests. He says: "God will not suffer this land, where the Gospel has of late flourished more than in any part of the world, to become a slave of the world. He will not suffer it to be made a land of graven images; He will stir up witnesses of the truth, ...
— Excellent Women • Various
... they ate their breakfast, Thaddeus explained. "I told Bradley that you were a sceptic on the subject of his jewel," he said, "and he offered to prove that she was eighteen carats fine by taking me home with him, an unexpected guest, by which act he would test her value to my satisfaction. Of course, having cast doubts upon her excellence, I had ...
— Paste Jewels • John Kendrick Bangs
... the Bible, which should be confined to persons who are calm and enlightened." But he goes on to say that he himself at forty-five reads daily one or two chapters, and finds new beauties in them, while at the age of twenty he was a sceptic, and found it difficult not to think that the family of Lot was unworthy to be saved, Noah unworthy to have lived, Saul a great criminal, and David a terrible man; that he had tried to understand everything, but that now he accepts everything without cavil or criticism. Truly, a Catholic might ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IX • John Lord
... the divine government of the universe were denied[109]. It went to Cicero's heart that Carneades should have found it necessary to oppose the beautiful Stoic theology, and he defends the great sceptic by the plea that his one aim was to arouse men to the investigation of the truth[110]. At the same time, while really following the Stoics in physics, Cicero often believed himself to be following Aristotle. This partly ...
— Academica • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... government: but the designs of an aspiring party, at that time were not otherwise to be compassed, than by undertaking any thing that would humble and mortify the Church; and I am fully convinced, that if a sect of sceptic philosophers (who profess to doubt of every thing) had been then among us, and mingled their tenets with some corruptions of Christianity, they might have obtained the same privilege; and that a law would ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift
... an adept in the art of pleading the impossible! You must excuse me; I am a sceptic; and I hope I am also in possession of my sober reason,—therefore, you can hardly wonder at my entirely refusing to accept such preposterous theories as those ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... receipt to Corny, and said nothing more. The sceptic read the paper out loud, and of course that settled the question. There was no room for a doubt after the ...
— All Adrift - or The Goldwing Club • Oliver Optic
... mortal shape, obvious to the organs of its fellow-men. The abstract idea of a spirit certainly implies that it has neither substance, form, shape, voice, or anything which can render its presence visible or sensible to human faculties. But these sceptic doubts of philosophers on the possibility of the appearance of such separated spirits, do not arise till a certain degree of information has dawned upon a country, and even then only reach a very small proportion of reflecting and better-informed members of society. To the ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... sir?" asked Bones in hushed ecstasy; "you won't believe what I'm going to tell you, sir—you're such a jolly old sceptic, sir—but Henry knows me—positively recognizes me! And when you remember that he's only ...
— Bones - Being Further Adventures in Mr. Commissioner Sanders' Country • Edgar Wallace
... join the Theosophists and kiss Buddha's big toe, did you? I tried to get into their set once, but they cast me out for a sceptic without a chance of improving my ...
— Under the Deodars • Rudyard Kipling
... unjust, my dear friend," said Lord Woodville. "You have only to reflect for a single moment, in order to be convinced that I could not augur the possibility of the pain to which you have been so unhappily exposed. I was yesterday morning a complete sceptic on the subject of supernatural appearances. Nay, I am sure that had I told you what was said about that room, those very reports would have induced you, by your own choice, to select it for your accommodation. It was my misfortune, perhaps my error, ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... of his pupils, upon its authenticity and inspiration. They were altogether remote from the subject; and afterwards, when I came to know what the difficulties of belief really were, I found that these essays, which were supposed to be a triumphant confutation of the sceptic, were a mere sword of lath. They never touched the question, and if any doubts suggested themselves to the audience, nobody dared to give them tongue, lest the expression of them should beget ...
— The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford • Mark Rutherford
... notorious person. He scraped acquaintance with Voltaire, Wesley, Rousseau, and Paoli, as well as with Mrs. Rudd, a forgotten heroine of the Newgate Calendar. He was as eager to talk to Hume the sceptic, or Wilkes the demagogue, as to the orthodox Tory, Johnson; and, if repelled, it was from no deficiency in daring. In 1767, he took advantage of his travels in Corsica to introduce himself to Lord Chatham, then Prime Minister. The letter moderately ends by asking, "Could your lordship find ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... a volatile youth. You mustn't mind him, doctor. He's a professional cynic, sceptic, and scoffer. Oxenden and I, however, are open to conviction, and want to know more about those birds and beasts. Can you make ...
— A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder • James De Mille
... Don Juan the sceptic shut the flask again in the secret drawer in the Gothic table—he meant to run no more risks ...
— The Elixir of Life • Honore de Balzac
... will not "judge before the time." It cannot be that he will ever cease to regard me with affection, though, perhaps, no longer with reverence; and I am confident that not even scepticism can chill the natural kindness of his disposition. I am persuaded that, even as a sceptic, he is very different from most sceptics. They cherish doubts; he will be impatient of them. Scepticism is, with them, a welcome guest, and has entered their hearts by an open door; I am sure that it must have stormed his, and entered it by ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... history of human knowledge. It is a mistake, however, to suppose that he was the first to infuse even into Roman story that element of doubt which has changed the whole fabric of historical science. If Niebuhr was a mere sceptic, he would be only the humble follower of Bayle, Lesurgnes de Pouilly, and other writers of the last century; but his merit lies in reconstruction—in the jealous care with which he distinguishes between the true monuments of history and the mass of traditional ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 453 - Volume 18, New Series, September 4, 1852 • Various
... one larger." I therefore humbly propose, that there should be at least an edge of foliage round the outskirts of the said wig; and that its curls should not exceed in number the leaves of the tree. There is also another practice almost equally prevalent, of which I am sceptic enough to doubt the propriety. I own, I cannot think it by any means conducive to the more effectual concealment of his Majesty, that there should be three Regal Crowns stuck on three different branches of the tree. ...
— Parodies of Ballad Criticism (1711-1787) • William Wagstaffe
... The pentecostal charism, I believe, exhausted itself amongst the earliest disciples. Yet any one who has had to attend, as I have done, to copious objurgations, strewn with such appellations as "infidel" and "coward," must be a hardened sceptic indeed if he doubts the existence of a "gift of tongues" in the Churches of our time; unless, indeed, it should occur to him that some of these outpourings may have taken place after "the third hour of the day." I am far from thinking that it is worth while to give much attention to these ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... that has stung the youth of Werther? Mistake it not, it is the spirit of doubt, the spirit of the eighteenth century; and it is not Werther only that the insect has stung—it is Goethe himself. Goethe belongs to the eighteenth century; he is its disciple, its heir; he is, like it, the sceptic, but he is also the poet. It is this which conceals his universal doubt. Besides, as he perceived, with that admirable tact which accompanies his genius, that his scepticism would injure his poetry, he has laboured to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... better marked and more distinctly connected with action, the truth that decided dissent from them implies more or less of a reproach upon those who hold them decidedly, becomes so obvious that every one perceives it.' No doubt a protestant or a sceptic regards the beliefs of a catholic as a reproach upon the believer's understanding. So the man whose whole faith rests on the miraculous and on acts of special intervention, regards the strictly positive and scientific ...
— On Compromise • John Morley
... was, and turned with highest expectations to the philosophers. I not only read, but I studied and pondered them with diligence, and with as sincere a desire of arriving at truth as ever scholar sat at the feet of his instructer. The result was anything but satisfying, I ended a universal sceptic, so far as human systems of philosophy were concerned, so far as they pretended to solve the enigma of God and man, of life and death; but with a heart, nevertheless, yearning after truth; and even full of faith, if that ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... said Mr. Lindsay, much amused, "if you are such a sceptic, you will take no comfort in anything at the Abbey, you will not ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... yonder fancy-haunted room, What mutter'd curses trembled through the gloom, When pale, and shiv'ring, and bedew'd with fear, The dying sceptic felt his hour drew near! From his parch'd tongue no sainted murmurs fell, No bright hopes kindled at his faint farewell; As the last throes of death convulsed his cheek, He gnash'd, and scowl'd, and raised a hideous shriek, Rounded his eyes ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... Mr. Moore sent to the press "Corruption and Intolerance;" two poems, with notes: addressed to an Englishman, by an Irishman; and in 1809, "The Sceptic," a philosophical satire. These works, of which the first is pungently satirical, are little known; but they are worthy of their author. They were succeeded in 1810, by "A Letter to the Roman Catholics of Dublin." His next production, "Intercepted ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 12, No. 349, Supplement to Volume 12. • Various
... whited sepulchre of his religious observances had concealed a mass of putrefaction. The sceptic confessed that his refusal of religion was largely due to his hatred of the demands of God's holy law. The multitudes confessed that they had been selfish and sensual, shutting up their compassions, and refusing clothing and food to ...
— John the Baptist • F. B. Meyer
... marvellous, remaining, musical fact not to be defined that makes the Parthenon, or some other masterpiece of art, translate us to a new plane of existence, and inspire, for the time being, the pessimist with hope and the sceptic with religion. ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... my friend and I went again to an evening seance at the same house, different people being present on this occasion. A stupid, "unintelligent sceptic" woman put us all out of harmony by making inane suggestions, always declaring that "she would not for the world interfere with the conditions," but doing so all the same. The "Angel Mother" came again, and rather ...
— Seen and Unseen • E. Katharine Bates
... simple cordiality of all the fellows. A subtle something was at work, and it gradually dawned on the young student that these good folk had the sentiment of brotherhood which is given by a common cause and a common secret. The early Christians loved one another, and here, on that grey sea, our sceptic saw the early Christian movement beginning all over again, with every essential feature reproduced. All types were represented; the grave man, the stern man, the sweet-faced dreamy man—even the comic man. The last-named here was much beloved and admired on account of ...
— A Dream of the North Sea • James Runciman
... Vict. Thou little sceptic! Dost thou still doubt? What I most prize in woman Is her affections, not her intellect! The intellect is finite; but the affections Are infinite, and cannot be exhausted. Compare me with the great men of the earth; What am I? Why, a pygmy among giants! But if thou ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... dealing with the subject is to convince the sceptic that there is anything to explain. Nowadays, the notion that a right is valuable is almost identical with the notion that it may be turned into money by selling it. But it was not always so. Before you can sell ...
— The Common Law • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
... becomes the authority of conscience. Under the reign of Christianity, then, there is no point in the onward progress of society where conscience dissolves, and leaves man and nations devoid of virtue; there is no point where conviction compels man to become a sceptic, and scepticism pulls him down into barbarism. As the atmosphere which surrounds our planet supplies the vital element alike to the full-grown man and to the infant, so Christianity supplies the breath of life to society in all ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... are—there must be such," he continued, with growing enthusiasm; "man is essentially a religious creature—a looker beyond the grave, from the very constitution of his mind; and the sceptic who denies it is untrue not merely to the Being who has made and who preserves him, but to the entire scope and bent of his own nature besides. Wherever man is—whether he be a wanderer of the wild forest or still wilder desert, a dweller ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton
... every characteristic the Irishman differed from his employee. While Jim's word was never questioned even by the veriest sceptic of the plains, McLagan was notoriously the greatest, most optimistic liar in the state of Montana. A reputation that required some niceness of proficiency ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... the happiest effect. Old Keskarrah alone used boldly to express his disbelief of a Supreme Deity, and state that he could not credit the existence of a Being, whose power was said to extend every where, but whom he had not yet seen, although he was now an old man. The aged sceptic is not a little conceited, as the following exordium to one of his speeches evinces: "It is very strange that I never meet with any one who is equal in sense to myself." The same old man, in one of his communicative ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 2 • John Franklin
... amazement when that household was named. Mrs Smith, their landlady, calmly brought her bills to Nettie, and forgot that it was not the most natural thing in the world that she should be paid by Miss Underwood. The only persistent sceptic was the doctor. Edward Rider could not, would not, believe it. He who had so chafed under Fred's society, felt it beyond the bounds of human possibility that Nettie could endure him. He watched with an eagerness which he found it difficult ...
— The Doctor's Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... be pleased to point them out too."—Bucke's Classical Gram., p. 16. "And if you can find a diphthong, or a triphthong, a trissyllable, or a polysyllable, point them respectively out."—Ib., p. 25. "The false refuges in which the atheist or the sceptic have intrenched themselves."—Christian Spect., viii, 185. "While the man or woman thus assisted by art expects their charms will be imputed to nature alone."—Opie, 141. "When you press a watch, or pull a clock, they answer your question ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... in me, I assure you. I'll bet fifty sequins that I will remain in the room a calm spectator of your exploits. My dear Betty, we must punish this sceptic; go to bed ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... partizan partisan patronize patronise phrenzy phrensy pinchers pincers plow plough poney pony potatoe potato quere query recognize recognise reindeer raindeer reinforce re-enforce restive restiff ribbon riband rince rinse sadler saddler sallad salad sceptic skeptic sceptical skeptical scepticism skepticism segar cigar seignor seignior serjeant sergeant shoar shore soothe sooth staunch stanch streight straight suitor suiter sythe scythe tatler tattler thresh ...
— English Grammar in Familiar Lectures • Samuel Kirkham
... you are, and I bet you do a jolly rank paper too,' I said, remembering that the sceptic is sometimes vouchsafed revelations to which the most devout believer may not aspire. It is, for instance, always the young man who scoffs at ghosts that the family spectre chooses as his audience. But it required more than a mere sneer or an empty gibe to pump information out of Bradshaw. ...
— Tales of St. Austin's • P. G. Wodehouse
... nearly a week afterwards, and was perfectly astounded when told by his wife and family what he had been doing on that particular evening; and, although previous to that date he was a thorough sceptic as to clairvoyance, he frankly admitted that my clairvoyant was perfectly correct in every particular. He also informed us that the book referred to was a new one, which he had purchased after he had left his home, so that ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... vegetarian—that would prevent me eating forbidden flesh. Have I ever told you my idea that vegetarianism is the first step in a great secret conspiracy for gradually converting the world to Judaism? But I'm afraid I can't be caught as easily as the Gentiles, Addie dear. You see, a Jewish sceptic beats all others. Corruptio optimi pessima, probably. Perhaps you would like me ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... golden age. For those who were weary of philosophy, they had a religion in which there was none. For those to whom the marvellous appealed, they had a history in which miracles were a string of pearls. For those who were sceptic concerning the post-mortem, they offered blankness. In addition, their god, the enemy of all others, was adapted to an empire that recognized no sovereignty but its own. Readily might Rome have become Hebrew. But then, with equal ease, she ...
— The Lords of the Ghostland - A History of the Ideal • Edgar Saltus
... abolished. Very far from that. We only claim that it is not of endless duration, and that it is of a reformatory character. If a man is thoroughly imbued with such ideas, he will be very far from being a sceptic. He will realize that the ...
— Love's Final Victory • Horatio
... approved of the sacrilege. At any rate, when his remains were safely on board the Venetian ship, and a man in another ship scoffed at the idea that they were authentic, the Venetian ship instantly and mysteriously made for the one containing this sceptic, stove its side in, and continued to ram it until he took back his doubts. And later, when, undismayed by this event, one of the sailors on S. Mark's own ship also denied that the body was genuine, he was possessed of a devil until he too changed ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... The sceptic might begin by questioning the fact itself; but I think it now so well established that argument on this score is unnecessary. Further, the deeper the trance, ceteris paribus, the better the phenomena. ...
— The Problems of Psychical Research - Experiments and Theories in the Realm of the Supernormal • Hereward Carrington
... fear, no remorse, none of that Shakespearean horror after the murder, which, today, sceptic though I am and blase and utterly, utterly disillusioned, sets me shuddering whenever I am alone in a ...
— Atlantida • Pierre Benoit
... shoals of people whom one never knows, Till it makes a poor fellow dyspeptic; And the world wags along with its sorrows and shows, And will do just the same when I'm dead I suppose; And I'm rapidly growing a sceptic. For its oh, alas, well-a-day, and a-lack! I've a pain in my head and an ache in my back; A terrible cold that makes me shiver, And a general sense of a dried-up liver; And I feel I can hardly bear it. And it's oh for a field with four hedgerows, And the bliss ...
— Interludes - being Two Essays, a Story, and Some Verses • Horace Smith
... he continued, after a moment's silence. "I have observed of late that you have grown sceptical about everything. You don't seem to believe in people as you did, and are always attributing motives and so on—am I using the word 'sceptic' in ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... undaunted soul Sails o'er the seas from pole to pole Sees many wonders, which become So wonderful they strike one dumb, When we in their description view Monsters which Adam never knew. Yet, on the other hand, the sceptic Supplies his moral antiseptic; Denying unto truths belief, With groans which give his ears relief: But truth is stranger far than fiction, And outlives sceptic contradiction. Read Pliny or old Aldrovandus, If—they would say—you understand us. Let other ...
— Fables of John Gay - (Somewhat Altered) • John Gay
... Ambrosio in opinion on the subjects you have just mentioned. In my youth, I was a sceptic; and this I believe is usually the case with young persons given to general and discursive reading, and accustomed to adopt something like a mathematical form in their reasonings; and it was in considering ...
— Consolations in Travel - or, the Last Days of a Philosopher • Humphrey Davy
... his "Representative Men," makes Montaigne stand for The Sceptic. Sceptic Montaigne was. He questioned, he considered, he doubted. He stood poised in equilibrium, in indifference, between contrary opinions. He saw reasons on this side, but he saw reasons also on that, ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... "There's a sceptic!" cried Mark. "Why, doesn't the sun rising and setting prove it to be all right? The needle always is correct unless ...
— Dead Man's Land - Being the Voyage to Zimbambangwe of certain and uncertain • George Manville Fenn
... Thus the sceptic still continues to reason and believe, even though be asserts, that he cannot defend his reason by reason; and by the same rule he must assent to the principle concerning the existence of body, though he cannot pretend by any arguments of philosophy to maintain ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... they rose from table, "a wonder has come to pass since you deserted us. Look, sceptic that you are!" and she led him to the window, and, lifting a glass shade which protected a flower-pot, showed him a green ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... scholasticism, it squared with Luther's exaggerations about the impotence of reason in fallen man, and Pascal had given his own highly personal twist to it. Bayle has been hailed as a forerunner of Voltairean scepticism. It would be truer to say that a Voltairean sceptic could read Bayle's discussions in his own sense and for his own purposes if he wished. But Bayle was not a sceptic. It is hard to say what he was; his whole position as between faith and reason is hopelessly confused. He was a scholar, ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz
... at the points where they are cited in the text. Some spellings were altered. "To-day" and "To-morrow" are spelled "today" and "tomorrow." Some words containing the letters "ise" in the original text, such as "idealise," had these letters changed to "ize," such as "idealize." "Sceptic" was changed to "skeptic." ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... impulse. This contrast or rather opposition between the seeming and the real, this new view of birth and death, this sudden flash of light athwart the impenetrable darkness, is what provokes the wonder of this scoffing sceptic.[185] ...
— The Sceptics of the Old Testament: Job - Koheleth - Agur • Emile Joseph Dillon
... fact that puerperal fever is sometimes communicated from one person to another, both directly and indirectly. In the present state of our knowledge upon this point I should consider such doubts merely as a proof that the sceptic had either not examined the evidence, or, having examined it, refused to accept its plain and unavoidable consequences. I should be sorry to think, with Dr. Rigby, that it was a case of "oblique vision"; I should ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... visit the Colemans at first as friends of the Allens, and not knowing their devilish tendencies. God had, however, he hoped, mercifully protected him. If it had not been for God's grace, where might he not have been that day? It was true that they were disciples of the French sceptic; his likeness was on the walls; his books were on the bookshelves! Mr. George Allen had been in the habit of associating not only with Mr. Coleman, but with the daughter, and with the daughter ALONE! as has already been stated. She was also an infidel—more so, perhaps, than her father; ...
— The Revolution in Tanner's Lane • Mark Rutherford
... the Neuroptera, we find different families with all grades of perfection in metamorphosis, it is possible that larger and higher groups may exist in which these modes of metamorphosis may be fixed and characteristic of each. Had we more space for the exposition of many known facts, the sceptic might perceive that by observing how arbitrary and dependent on the habits of the insects are the metamorphoses of some groups, the fixed modes of other and more general groups may be seen to be probably due to biological causes, or in other words have been acquired ...
— Our Common Insects - A Popular Account of the Insects of Our Fields, Forests, - Gardens and Houses • Alpheus Spring Packard
... its fitting climax of horror at the exact moment foretold to him by a ghostly visitor. Various and somewhat conflicting accounts are given of this singular tragedy; but in them all the chief incidents stand out so clear and unassailable that even such a hard-headed sceptic as Dr Johnson declared, "I am so glad to have evidence of the spiritual world that I am willing ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... it was brave. It was. I was only fifteen, and I had lived all my days in the thick of the mystery stuff, while my scepticism, very recently acquired, was only skin-deep. I could be a sceptic out in the open in the sunshine. But I was afraid of the dark. And in that twilight room, the bones of the dead all about me in the big jars, why, the old lady had me scared stiff. As we say to-day, she had my goat. Only ...
— On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales • Jack London
... it been told of some distant country, at a remote period, we could not have told what peculiar circumstances there might have been to render probable what seems to us most strange; and yet in that case every philosophical sceptic, every free-thinking speculator, would instantly have rejected such a history, as utterly unworthy of credit. What, for instance, would the great Hume, or any of the philosophers of his school, have said, if they had found in the antique records of any nation, such a passage as this? "There was ...
— Historic Doubts Relative To Napoleon Buonaparte • Richard Whately
... such corner-stone, or even so much as what Teufelsdrockh, is looking at? He exclaims, "Or hast thou forgotten Paris and Voltaire? How the aged, withered man, though but a Sceptic, Mocker, and millinery Court-poet, yet because even he seemed the Wisest, Best, could drag mankind at his chariot-wheels, so that princes coveted a smile from him, and the loveliest of France would have laid their hair beneath his feet! All Paris was one ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... an aid to surgical practice. A broken bone—the sceptic's last resource—cannot of course be treated by autosuggestion alone. A surgeon must be called in to mend it. But when the limb has been rightly set and the necessary mechanical precautions have been taken, autosuggestion will provide the best possible conditions ...
— The Practice of Autosuggestion • C. Harry Brooks
... irony, but later, under the influence of his critical antagonism to Brunetiere, growing keener, stronger, and more bitter. In 'Thais' he has undertaken to show the bond of sympathy that unites the pessimistic sceptic to the Christian ascetic, since both despise the world. In 'Lys Rouge', his greatest novel, he traces the perilously narrow line that separates love from hate; in 'Opinions de M. l'Abbe Jerome Coignard' he has given us the most radical breviary of scepticism that has appeared ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... his work, the sense of transience—Botticelli, as age came upon him, was more than ever depressed. One has the feeling that he was persuaded that only through devotion and self-negation could peace of mind be gained, and yet for himself could find none. The sceptic was too strong in him. Savonarola's eloquence could not make him serene, however much he may have come beneath its spell. It but served to increase his melancholy. Hence these wistful despondent Madonnas, all so conscious of the ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas
... great shock to me. It seemed clear from his answers to the sceptic that the case for doctrinal orthodoxy and all that faded and by no means awful hereafter, which I had hitherto accepted as I accepted the sun, was an extremely poor one, and to hammer home that idea the first book I got from the Institute ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... heaven-favour'd round, Heaven-guarded, too, no Envy entrance found; Nor numerous wants, that vex advancing age, Nor Flattery's silver tale, nor Sorrow's sage; Frugal Affliction kept each growing dart, To o'erwhelm in future days the bleeding heart. No sceptic art veil'd Pride in Truth's disguise, But prayer unsoil'd of doubt besieged the skies; Ambition, avarice, care, to man retired, Nor came desires more quick than joys desired. A summer morn there was, and passing fair, Still was the breeze, and health perfumed the air; The glowing east in crimson'd ...
— Inebriety and the Candidate • George Crabbe
... over the Irtish is unrivalled. Being nearly four miles long, it is on that account phenomenal; but its stupendous piers, designed specially to resist the fearful pressure of the ice, would alone convince any sceptic of the determination of the Russian administration to spare none of the resources of the Empire in order to make this railway absolutely efficient, alike for mercantile and military purposes. The Trans-Siberian Railway is intended to create a new Siberia. It is already fulfilling that aim, ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various
... do rats! And if she had imagined the noises, why did she not imagine other things; why, for example, did she not see tables dance, and tea-urns walk? All that would be fancy, unblushing, genuine fancy, and if she conjured up one absurdity, why not another! That was a conundrum for any sceptic. Thus did she argue, naturally and logically, in the quite sensible fashion of a lawyer, or a scientist; yet, all the while, her senses told her that the atmosphere of the house had undergone some profoundly subtle and unaccountable change,—a change that brought with it a presence, ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell
... mind. This passivity cannot exclude expectancy, since it is only assumed in order that something may occur. If nothing occurs, if no communications are received, it is because the requisite conditions have not been fulfilled, and the sceptic is met with much semi-scientific jargon as to conditions being necessary to every scientific investigation. The fact that this passivity and expectancy, with other attendant circumstances, not the least of which is the contagious influence of a number of people with a similar mental disposition, ...
— Religion & Sex - Studies in the Pathology of Religious Development • Chapman Cohen
... the official right to affix these labels could think of no more contemptuous name, and could not suppose the most audacious soul capable of advancing even under the leadership of Satan himself beyond a stray doubt or so. He had perhaps as little of the sceptic in his constitution as Bossuet or Butler, and was much less capable of becoming one than De Maistre or Paley. This was a prime secret of his power, for the mere critic and propounder of unanswered doubts never leads more than a handful of men after him. Voltaire boldly put the great question, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... newspapers published fulminatory articles; flaming protests were made in the clubs against the surreptitious propaganda of Rome. The ultramontane party leaders rejoiced and made capital out of the marvellous return of such a sceptic to the bosom of the Church which alone can save the souls of men: they used the case as a bait for fresh recruits and as a means to fill the old regulars with greater fire and enthusiasm. Through the homes blew a breath of a tyrannical ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... them a part of themselves, freshening and supplying the life-blood of their very being. Truth must be believed by the mind's own act; our souls must be drawn towards it with a reasonable love; some affinity there must be between it and them, or else they can never really comprehend it. The sceptic may desperately become a fanatic also, but he is not ...
— The Christian Life - Its Course, Its Hindrances, And Its Helps • Thomas Arnold
... music. He talked neither of music nor of acting; he made no one sharer of his enjoyment, if he did enjoy. It was simply his way of cheating his creative faculty, which, though it had grown impotent, was still there, still restless. Altogether a melancholy, pitiable man—at once thorough-going sceptic and thorough-going idealist, the victim of that critical sense which says No to every impulse, and is always restlessly, and yet hopelessly, seeking the future through the neglected ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... from violent measures, had no lack of courage, and in his own name he told the truth about the most dignified ecclesiastics. No artifices imposed upon him, and he acknowledged no master but Christ. He translated the arch-sceptic Lucian, about whom Froude has himself written a delightful essay. "I wish," said Froude, "I wish more of us read Lucian now. He was the greatest man by far outside the Christian Church in the second century." Lucian lived ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... has been often and very truly said that it is not the conscious and self-styled sceptic, as Shelley, for example, who is the true unbeliever. Such a man as Shelley will, as indeed his life abundantly proves, have more in common than not with the true unselfconscious believer. Gallio again, whose indifference to religious animosities has won him the cheapest ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... astounding argument, "We believe that the Bible is true, because our holy Mother, the Church, tells us it is." I pity that unfortunate clergyman if ever he is bold enough to enter any Young Men's Debating Club where there is some clear-headed sceptic who has heard, or heard of, that sermon. I can fancy how the young man would rub his hands, in delight, and would say to himself, "Just see me get him into a corner, and convict him of arguing ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood
... But as these books and papers existed, and were known to exist, before the occurrence of the visions, it is obvious that the matter of the visions may have been derived from the books and so forth, or at least, a sceptic will vastly prefer this explanation. What we need is a dream or vision of the unknown past, corroborated by a document not known to exist at the time when the vision took place and was recorded. Probably there is no such instance, ...
— The Book of Dreams and Ghosts • Andrew Lang
... prophecy of Moses, and those of Ezekiel, referred to, have never yet been fulfilled, is undeniable; and that they will be fulfilled, will not be doubted by a Christian; and can hardly be disbelieved by a Sceptic, who will take the trouble to compare the history of "the eternal people,"[fn86] with the predictions concerning it which have been ...
— Five Pebbles from the Brook • George Bethune English
... believe that our {10} experiments and studies and discussions must put us in a continually better and better position towards it; and on this line we agree to fight out our thinking lives. But if a pyrrhonistic sceptic asks us how we know all this, can our logic find a reply? No! certainly it cannot. It is just one volition against another,—we willing to go in for life upon a trust or assumption which he, for his part, ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... I say, I never ask anybody to believe me; the more so as I was once an absolute sceptic myself. As I see it now, I was prejudiced. The mere fact that spiritual seances and the services of a medium involved the payment of money condemned the whole thing in my eyes. I did not realize, as I do now, that these medii, like anybody else, have got to live; otherwise ...
— Frenzied Fiction • Stephen Leacock
... ladders, in putting his little limbs out of joint in posturing. He had lived in an atmosphere of trickery and deception. He had learned to look upon mankind as dupes of their senses: in fine, if he had thought at all, he would have been a sceptic; if he had been a little older, he would have been a cynic; if he had been older still, he would have been a philosopher. As it was, he was a little imp. A good-natured imp it was, too,—an imp whose moral nature had never been awakened,—an imp up for a holiday, and willing ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... There is much truth in this metaphor. Burns was, in religious matters, one of a very large class. Many men rid their intellects of a superstition, without being able to resist its power over their feelings. Even so profound a sceptic as Renan has admitted that his life is guided by a faith he no longer possesses. And we are all familiar with instances ...
— Prisoner for Blasphemy • G. W. [George William] Foote
... puffed up with pride, a great talker, always shallow and fickle, skipping from one subject to another without even thoroughly examining a single one. At one moment he is a Deist, at another a Materialist, then he is a Sceptic, and again an Atheist; always changing his views, but always a slave of his passions, ...
— Public School Education • Michael Mueller
... drew an important statement from Bobinette. He played the part of sceptic. The more enthusiastically convinced Bobinette was that the "great affair" would be successful, the more sceptical ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre
... according as the logical faculty is more or less developed in those whose minds have been fed upon it. However, there was nothing aggressive in the attitude of either toward religious observance. The grandfather especially seems to have been a "gentle sceptic," an agnostic in the germ, affirming nothing beyond the natural, probably because all substantial ground for supernatural affirmations seemed to him to be cut away by the fundamental training imparted to him. He was a kindly, virtuous, warm-hearted man, ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... of ghosts and spirits—they wouldn't do harm to you or any of us," remarked another fellow who was looked upon as the chief sceptic of the crew, though it is difficult to say what they did or did not believe, for considering their lives it might be supposed that ...
— Dick Cheveley - His Adventures and Misadventures • W. H. G. Kingston
... amused his fancy and exercised his ingenuity, they never once disturbed his vanity, his levity, or indifference. His mind was the antithesis of strength and grandeur; its power was the power of indifference. He had none of the enthusiasm of poetry: he was in poetry what the sceptic ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... rely upon Reason, how do we know that Reason itself is trustworthy? Do we not want some criterion for it? And, even if such a criterion existed, must we not have for it, in its turn, some higher criterion? The Sceptic thus justified his assertion that to man there is no ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... required even to imagine this. They only think of a mob as a thing that breaks things—even if they admit it is right to break them. But the mob made these things. An artist mocked as many-headed, an artist with many eyes and hands, created these masterpieces. And if the modern sceptic, in his detestation of the democratic ideal, complains of my calling them masterpieces, a simple answer will for the moment serve. It is enough to reply that the very word "masterpiece" is borrowed from the terminology ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton
... "What a little sceptic it is! Look at her small face, Mrs. Pryor, scarcely larger than the palm of my hand, alive with acuteness and eagerness." To Caroline—"She had the trouble of bringing you into the world at any rate. Mind you show your duty to her by quickly getting well, and repairing ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... a sceptic on the surface and a believer underneath. Pascal has called Montaigne 'un pur pyrrhonien'; but Pascal himself has been accused of scepticism. Living in an age when the crimes daily committed in the name of religion might so easily have inspired a hater of violence ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... intellectual consternation, White, who was a decent self-respecting sceptic, read these last clamberings of Benham's spirit. They were written in pencil; they ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... not marvel,' answered the Nazarene, 'that thou hast thus erred, or that thou art thus sceptic. Eighty years ago there was no assurance to man of God, or of a certain and definite future beyond the grave. New laws are declared to him who has ears—a heaven, a true Olympus, is revealed to him who has eyes—heed then, ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... To the Sceptic—(an apostate, and an undoubted male)—another view was preferable. He held that George Eliot had carried what he called the 'Death's-Head Style' of art a trifle too far. He read her books in much the same spirit and to much the same purpose that ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... founded on scientific observation, have served directly or indirectly religious and social interests, and hence they have been protected by force against the criticisms of persons who have the inconvenient habit of using their reason. Nobody minds if his neighbour disbelieves a demonstrable fact. If a sceptic denies that Napoleon existed, or that water is composed of oxygen and hydrogen, he causes amusement or ridicule. But if he denies doctrines which cannot be demonstrated, such as the existence of a personal God or the immortality of the soul, he incurs serious disapprobation and at one time ...
— A History of Freedom of Thought • John Bagnell Bury |
