"Speculation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and Polly will be there," he thought, and went off into further speculation as to what the Beeman would look like in the more civilized clothes that such an occasion would demand. "I might not even know him," ...
— The Windy Hill • Cornelia Meigs
... not of a vivid effect upon my disordered imagination, yet was it evanescent as vivid. For some weeks, indeed, I busied myself in earnest inquiry, or was wrapped in a cloud of morbid speculation. I did not pretend to disguise from my perception the identity of the singular individual who thus perseveringly interfered with my affairs, and harassed me with his insinuated counsel. But who ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill
... others, add as much of ordinary travel. No man, saith Lipsius, in an epistle to Phil. Lanoius, a noble friend of his, now ready to make a voyage, [3193]"can be such a stock or stone, whom that pleasant speculation of countries, cities, towns, rivers, will not affect." [3194] Seneca the philosopher was infinitely taken with the sight of Scipio Africanus' house, near Linternum, to view those old buildings, cisterns, baths, tombs, &c. And how was [3195]Tully pleased with the sight of Athens, to ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... greatest civilizer. Very shortly, without doubt, it will be replaced by the avenue of the skies. If we are to strive for freedom of the seas, what shall we say about freedom of this new element? The laws of aerial travel and aerial warfare open an unlimited field of speculation. ...
— Opportunities in Aviation • Arthur Sweetser
... coffin had remained. Up-ended and neatly fitted with shelves, it served as a store cupboard, without a door, pending its proper use. But it was a terribly expensive store cupboard and it stood in Mr. Pinnock's parlour as a gloomy monument to the folly of rash and hazardous speculation. ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... But speculation on all such contingencies was suddenly cut short by the complete change of policy at home. The idea was to end the civil war that had divided the Empire and to concentrate on the foreign war that at least united the people of Great ...
— The Father of British Canada: A Chronicle of Carleton • William Wood
... mental constitution—the vein of humour, whose source was a strong contempt of all things false, mean, shabby, pretentious, and only external—of bunkum and Barnumisation—must have seen a gigantic speculation realising shiploads of dollars if the Tower could have been taken over to the States, and exhibited from town to town—the Stars and Stripes flying over it—with a four-horse lecture to describe the barbarity of the ancient British Barons ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 1 • Charles Farrar Browne
... Having money in hand, either from savings during the four years' sojourn abroad, where his expenses (including all purchases of objects of art and vertu) did not amount to more than L300 a year, or else from his child-wife's dowry, he dabbled in land speculation with the fairly satisfactory result that on the whole he does not appear to have lost ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... those who have not been led to consideration or inquiry upon the subject, this may be deemed a mere speculation; but those who are even slightly acquainted with the real state of things, will, I believe agree with me that if men, respectable and in earnest and moderately informed, would only set about the matter, they would soon be astonished at the ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 53. Saturday, November 2, 1850 • Various
... whether he was or was not one to be honored with her confidence; and I have often seen the side-long glance of sly merriment, or loving shyness, or small coquetry; but I have never, in any other child, seen that look of self-protective speculation; and it used to make me uneasy, for of course, like every one else in the house, I loved the child. She was a wayward, often unmanageable creature, but affectionate,—sometimes after an insane, or, at least, very ape-like fashion. Every now and then she would take ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald
... Author, who'd essayed All Hazards of the scribbling Trade; And failed to live by every Mode, From Persian Tale to Birthday Ode; Embarked at last, thro' pure Starvation, In Theologic Speculation. 'Tis commonly affirmed his Pen Had been most orthodox till then; But oft, as SOCRATES has said, The Stomach's stronger than the Head; And, for a sudden Change of Creed, There is no Jesuit like Need. Then, too, 'twas cheap; he took it all, By force of Habit, from the Gaul. He showed ...
— Collected Poems - In Two Volumes, Vol. II • Austin Dobson
... in the murmurs which attributed the woes of the Teutonic invasions to the displeasure of the heathen gods at the neglect of their worship.(245) In the East it disappears altogether. Doubt there expires, because speculation ceases and Christian thought becomes fixed; nor will it be necessary in future to recur to the history of the ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... have, as many writers confidently find that we do have, a very large proportion of scholars, scientists, savants derived from this class and deriving their incentive to scientific investigation and speculation from the discipline of a life of leisure. Some such result is to be looked for, but there are features of the leisure-class scheme of life, already sufficiently dwelt upon, which go to divert the intellectual interest of this class to other subjects than that causal sequence ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... the very deep itself is vivid with sparkle and corruscation of electric fire. So through every scale, from the zoophyte to the warm-blooded whale, the sea teems with life, out of which fewer links have been dropped than from sub-aerial life. It is a matter for curious speculation that the missing species belong not to the lower subsidiary genera, as in terrene animals, but to the highest types of marine life. In the quarries of Lyme Regis, among the accumulations of a sea of the Liassic period, lay the huge skeleton of the Ichthyosaurus, a warm-blooded marine existence, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... elevated—it has as much delight in conceiving an Iago as an Imogen. What shocks the virtuous philosopher delights the chameleon poet. It does no harm from its relish of the dark side of things, any more than from its taste for the bright one, because they both end in speculation. A poet is the most unpoetical of anything in existence, because he has no identity; he is continually in for, and filling, some other body. The sun, the moon, the sea, and men and women, who are creatures of impulse, are poetical, and have about them an unchangeable attribute; ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... that a false argument is comparatively harmless because subsequent discussion is sure to demolish it, whereas a false fact may perplex speculation for ages. Chapman's assertion that there is love in all Bushman marriages is one of these false facts, as our cross-examination has shown. In passing now to the neighbors of the Bushmen, the Hottentots, let us bear in mind the lesson taught. They called themselves ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... the philosophy of Locke besides his fundamental naturalism; and in his private mind probably the most important was his Christian faith, which was not only confident and sincere, but prompted him at times to high speculation. He had friends among the Cambridge Platonists, and he found in Newton a brilliant example of scientific rigour capped with mystical insights. Yet if we consider Locke's philosophical position in the abstract, his Christianity almost disappears. In form ...
— Some Turns of Thought in Modern Philosophy - Five Essays • George Santayana
... fighting hard under one banner or the other. As the last week drew to a close and left only the few days of the following week for a round-up of the forces before the Wednesday election, the men all became absorbed to the point of oblivion to everything save the speculation as to how the race would go. But it was not in the nature of David Kildare to be held against the grindstone of serious endeavor too long at a time, and in the midst of the turmoil he proceeded to plot for a brief and exciting relaxation for himself and ...
— Andrew the Glad • Maria Thompson Daviess
... satisfied that the intellectual gymnastics had properly trained and developed her, he invited her— where he felt assured the spirit of the age would inevitably drive her—to the great Pythian games of speculation, where the lordly intellects of the nineteenth century gather to test their ratiocinative skill, and bear off the crown of bay on the point of a syllogism or the ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... this is all. The other Jacobins alongside of him likewise use the same scholastic jargon; but none of them spout and spread out so complacently and lengthily as he. For hours, we grope after him in the vague shadows of political speculation, in the cold and perplexing mist of didactic generalities, trying in vain to make something out of his colorless tirades, and we grasp nothing.[3191] When we, in astonishment, ask ourselves what all this talk amounts to, and why he talks at all; the answer is, that he has said ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... be a record of the Northmen of Vinland; such those that mark the faces of the cliffs which overhang the waters of the Orinoco, and those that in Oregon, Peru, and La Plata have been the subject of much curious speculation. They are alike the mute and meaningless epitaphs of ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... speculation why, after seven years spent in producing a stream of not unsuccessful social comedies and farces, leading up to a final and brilliant success in the field of political satiric drama, Fielding should have thrown up the stage as a whole, when suddenly debarred ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... farming, in fact, as a 'commercial speculation,' with the view of realising cent. per cent. He began at the time when it was daily announced that old-fashioned farming was a thing of the past. Business maxims and business practice were to be the rule of the future. Farming was not to be farming; it was to be emphatically ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... read the obituary notice which I have been quoting, quite by chance, along with a great many others of the same period. It had excited some little speculation in my mind, but, beyond thinking that, if I ever had an opportunity of examining the local records of the period indicated, I would try to remember Dr Haynes, I made no effort ...
— Ghost Stories of an Antiquary - Part 2: More Ghost Stories • Montague Rhodes James
... and kings. Men bolder than these had overthrown and rearranged—not actually, but within the sphere of theory, which was their most real abode—the whole system of ancient prejudice, wherewith was linked much of ancient principle. Hester Prynne imbibed this spirit. She assumed a freedom of speculation, then common enough on the other side of the Atlantic, but which our forefathers, had they known it, would have held to be a deadlier crime than that stigmatised by the scarlet letter. In her lonesome cottage, ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... person who pervades the domain of intellectual speculation and diffuses himself through the channels of moral activity. He is omnific, omniform, omnipercipient, omniscience, omnipotent. He it was who invented letters, printing, the railroad, the steamboat, the telegraph, the ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... I envy you. When you are giving up your lives to feeding your children, I envy you. I watch your flights for food for them. I say to myself, 'I, too, would struggle to keep a child, if I had one. Commerce, invention, speculation—why could I not succeed in one of these? I have arrived in the most intricate profession of all. I am a cardinal archbishop. Could I not have been a stockbroker?' Ah, signore and signora," and he ...
— The Turquoise Cup, and, The Desert • Arthur Cosslett Smith
... ever cross your mind what this is all about? The Hammersmith to Maida Vale thoroughfare was an uncommonly good speculation. You and I hoped a great deal from it. But is it worth it? It will cost us thousands to crush this ridiculous riot. ...
— The Napoleon of Notting Hill • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... Hon. H. S. Conway, July 15.-Dismissal of Necker. Paris in an uproar. Storming and destruction of the Bastille. Speculation on the probable results. The Duke ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... habit of mind a naturalist, busy with dissections and drawings, pursuing his branch of science for itself and with no concern as to its possible relation to philosophical speculation or religious dogma. It is possible that, had his life been passed under different conditions, his intellectual activities might have been spent entirely on his scientific work. As it was, he became almost more widely known as a hostile critic of accepted religious ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell
... breakfast, lunch, and dinner, I was, as the fashionable saying is, "fairly knocked up." This expression, which I find obtains universally here, corresponds to what we mean by being "used up." They talk of Americanisms, and I have a little innocent speculation now and then concerning Anglicisms. I certainly find several here for which I can perceive no more precedent in the well of "English undefiled," than for some of ours; for instance, this being "knocked up," which is variously inflected, as, ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... went back to his cooling coffee Anstice wondered vaguely what Sir Richard could have to say; but since speculation was mere idle waste of time he dismissed the matter from his mind and finished ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... the worthy Gabriel Requa, braved the perils of the Tappan Sea. Alas! Gabriel and the "Farmer's Daughter" slept in peace. Two steamboats now splashed and paddled up daily to the little rural port of Tarrytown. The spirit of speculation and improvement had seized even upon that once quiet and unambitious little dorp. The whole neighborhood was laid out into town lots. Instead of the little tavern below the hill, where the farmers used to loiter on market days and indulge in cider ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving
... been untruly asserted of Genesis i. is true of Genesis ii. iii. The Jehovist narrative does shine by the absence of all efforts after rationalistic explanation, by its contempt for every kind of cosmological speculation. The earth is regarded as being at first not moist and plastic but (as in Job xxxviii. 38) hard and dry: it must rain first in order that the desert may be turned into a green meadow, as is the case still every year when the showers of spring come. The ground further requires cultivation ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... article has Hutton's fault of seeing so very far into a mill-stone." And, two years later, "The Spectator has an article in which Hutton shows his strange aptitude for getting hold of the wrong end of the stick." Both were sound criticisms. When Hutton addressed himself to a deep topic of abstract speculation, he "saw so very far into it" that even his most earnest admirers could not follow the visual act. When he handled the more commonplace subjects of thought or action with which ordinary men concern themselves, ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... the empire; what revenue might be expected from it, if so applied; and in what manner a general union of this kind might be likely to affect the happiness and prosperity of the differrent provinces comprehended within it. Such a speculation, can, at worst, be regarded but as a new Utopia, less amusing, certainly, but no more useless and chimerical than the ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... power is broken at the root by Christ." He argues that "the world-order, being in process as a moral order, permits breaches everywhere into which Satan can obtain entrance" (pp. 99, 102). H. L. Martensen gives even freer rein to speculation. "The evil principle," he says, "has in itself no personality, but attains a progressively universal personality in its kingdom; it has no individual personality, save only in individual creatures, who in an especial manner make themselves its organs; but among these is ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 3 - "Destructors" to "Diameter" • Various
... This backward speculation, had it begun to play, however, would have been easily arrested; for it was at present to come over Amerigo as never before that his remarkable father-in-law was the man in the world least equipped with different appearances for different hours. He was simple, he was a revelation ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... the opposite extreme. There reformers have been trained, not in the arena of practical politics, but in the school of political speculation. As soon, therefore, as they begin to examine any simple matter with a view to legislation, it at once becomes a "question," and flies up into the region of political and social science. Whilst we have been groping along an unexplored path, the Russians have—at ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... bankers and merchants decupled their capital; if the state became the universal banker, and centralized all the values in circulation, the public fortune would naturally be decupled. A radically false system, fated to plunge the state, and consequently the whole nation, into the risks of speculation and trading, without the guarantee of that activity, zeal, and prompt resolution which able men of business can import into their private enterprises. The system was not as yet applied; the discreet routine of the ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... maintenance which would have sufficed to keep ten hungry sailors, not speak of two little pecking birds like you, and besides that you do hard service without any pay. Indeed it would be a more profitable speculation to steal a beggar's rags than to rob you! Well, what ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... completed work. Undoubtedly careful discrimination of species is the foundation of all good work; but I must look at such papers as yours in Silliman as the fruit. As careful observation is far harder work than generalisation, and still harder than speculation, do you not think it very possible that it may be overvalued? It ought never to be forgotten that the observer can generalise his own observations incomparably better than any one else. How many astronomers have laboured their whole lives on observations, ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... never enjoyed speculation of this sort. But since the atom bomb, many scientists had been forced to look at the ethics of their profession. Dennison looked at his and ...
— Forever • Robert Sheckley
... healthy mind recoiled from morbid speculation. He took a trip into Devonshire, and found there a recrudescence of the old calm joyousness that he believed had somehow left him. He roved the Devon hills in wind and rain, drew into his lungs ...
— Colorado Jim • George Goodchild
... 72: You shall soon know)—Ver. 612. Madame Dacier suggests that Chremes is prevented by his wife's coming from making a proposal to advance the money himself, on the supposition that it will be a lucrative speculation. This notion is contradicted by Colman, who adds the following note from Eugraphius: "Syrus pretends to have concerted this plot against Menedemus, in order to trick him out of some money to be given to Clinia's supposed mistress. Chremes, however, does not approve of this: ...
— The Comedies of Terence - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Notes • Publius Terentius Afer, (AKA) Terence
... remained for the living of that crushed heart, was with Emily and Clarendon, and their children; perhaps more than all, with his young heir and god-son, Henry Delme Gage. The very colour of that sunny lock of hair, gave rise to much speculation: and it seemed as if he would never be wearied, of listening to the minutest description of the dawning of intellect, in a precocious little fellow of barely five ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... verb, noun, and adjective. "It may hap that he will come." It happened as I was going that I found my lost child, and was thereby made quite happy. The man desired to happify himself and family without much labor, so he engaged in speculation; and happily he was not so hapless in his pursuit of happiness as often happens to such hap-hazard fellows, for he soon became very ...
— Lectures on Language - As Particularly Connected with English Grammar. • William S. Balch
... Paul Blunt would have induced the attorney and his companion to relinquish their pursuit but for two circumstances. They had both undertaken the job as a speculation, or on the principle of "no play, no pay," and all their trouble would be lost without success. Then the very difficulty that occurred had been foreseen, and while the officer proceeded to the ship, the uncle ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... thought you had more sense. If I were of the police, I should have taken you long ago, for some little affairs less honorable than this speculation." ...
— The Queen's Necklace • Alexandre Dumas pere
... disgrace. Aw wonder what th' mooast o' th' banks are but pop shops. What difference is ther between a pop ticket an' a check book? Varry little nobbut th' bugth. I' my opinion it's noa moor a disgrace for a chap to pop a paper coller nor for another to morgage a property. Ther's a gooid deal o' speculation sometimes i' booath cases. Nah, aw once knew a chap at popt a haufacraan for two-an-four-pence, an then sell'd th' ticket for a shillin: soa he didn't loise owt. They're useful places i' ther way, though aw dooant mean to say at ther's noa evils connected wi' 'em. Nah, aw once ...
— Yorksher Puddin' - A Collection of the Most Popular Dialect Stories from the - Pen of John Hartley • John Hartley
... and yet not an altogether unreasonable speculation that sees in word order and stress the primary methods for the expression of all syntactic relations and looks upon the present relational value of specific words and elements as but a secondary condition due to ...
— Language - An Introduction to the Study of Speech • Edward Sapir
... year never exchange a word. There is not even the air of reckless adventure to excite one. The player who dashes down his all on any part of the table and trusts to fortune is a mere creature of fiction; the gambler of fact is a calculator, a man of business, with a contempt for speculation and a firm belief in long-studied combination. Each has his little card, and ticks off the succession of numbers with the accuracy of a ledger. It is in the careful study of these statistics that each believes he discovers the secret of the ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... ancient house, surrounded by a moat, has been swept away, and the present mansion was built in the seventeenth century out of the proceeds of a sunken Spanish treasure-ship, Sir James Hayes, who built the house, having gone into a speculation with Lord Falkland and others to recover the treasure. This origin of Bedgebury House is recorded on its foundation-stone: it has been greatly enlarged by successive owners, and is surrounded by ornamental gardens and grounds, with a park of wood, lake, and heather covering two thousand acres. ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... furnished, it is one hundred and sixty pounds. Rock Park, as the locality is called, is private property, and is now nearly covered with residences for professional people, merchants, and others of the upper middling class; the houses being mostly built, I suppose, on speculation, and let to those who occupy them. It is the quietest place imaginable, there being a police station at the entrance, and the officer on duty allows no ragged or ill-looking person to pass. There being a ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... travelled along, as if they had been yoked together, through whole fields of suggestive speculation, until the dumb growths of thought ripened in both their souls into articulate speech, consentingly, as the movement comes after the long ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... turns upon its axis, and a still greater one that it revolves about the sun (to show this last was worth a man's lifetime, and it really almost cost the life of Galileo). Somehow we are ready to think that they had a wider field than we for speculation, that truth being all unknown it was easier to take the first step in its paths. But is the region of truth limited? Is it not infinite?... We know a few things which were once hidden, and being known they seem easy; but there are the flashings of the Northern Lights—'Across ...
— Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals • Maria Mitchell
... developments received full contemporary notice, for war filled the front pages of the newspapers. The men who directed them were not under scrutiny, and could hardly fail to bring into business and speculation that main canon of war time that the end is everything and that it justifies the means. But though war was not the sole American occupation between 1861 and 1865, and though a new industrial revolution was begun, material things often gave way in the American mind to altruistic concepts and ...
— The New Nation • Frederic L. Paxson
... with the keys of knowledge, and cannot consequently anticipate a very lenient verdict. But we now tell them before the world, that they have a duty to perform, and an examination to make, and a decision to come to, "whether these things are so." Our theory may be called an ingenious speculation, but WE CHALLENGE THE SCIENTIFIC TO PROVE IT—NOTHING ELSE. The theory furnishes them with tests of daily occurrence, to prove or to disprove it. By such a trial we are willing to be judged; but let it be conducted in the spirit recommended in the opening address before the American Association ...
— Outlines of a Mechanical Theory of Storms - Containing the True Law of Lunar Influence • T. Bassnett
... easily understood that there was more or less speculation among the scouts as they hurried along. Would the farmer find his missing wad snugly secreted in the old Dutch oven, as Paul so confidently suggested? And if such turned out to be the case, wouldn't it prove ...
— Boy Scouts on a Long Hike - Or, To the Rescue in the Black Water Swamps • Archibald Lee Fletcher
... own brain, that sneers at us for our own failings? Perhaps madness? More likely, for there are few men who are not mad one hour of the waking twelve. If differing from the judgment of the majority of mankind in regard to familiar things be madness, I suppose I am mad—or too wise. The speculation draws near to hair-splitting. James North, recall your early recklessness, your ruin, and your redemption; bring your mind back to earth. Circumstances have made you what you are, and will shape your destiny for you without ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... account of Lowell, and inadequate expression of the gratification it yielded me, and cannot fail to afford to any foreigner to whom the condition of such people at home is a subject of interest and anxious speculation, I have carefully abstained from drawing a comparison between these factories and those of our own land. Many of the circumstances whose strong influence has been at work for years in our manufacturing towns have not arisen here; and there is no manufacturing ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... by direct intellectual abstraction and effort, by metaphysical speculation, to grasp the true principles of being. Others try, by voluntary penance, self abnegation, and pain, to accumulate such a degree of merit, or to bring the soul into such a state of preparedness, as will compel ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... school, of which Richard and Hugo of St. Victor, Bonaventura, and Albertus Magnus were among the greatest names. These men were working out in their own fashion the psychology of the contemplative life, showing how we may ascend through "cogitation, meditation, and speculation" to "contemplation," and how we may pass successively through jubilus, ebrietas spiritus, spiritualis jucunditas, and liquefactio, till we attain raptus or ecstasy. The writings of the scholastic mystics are so overweighted with this pseudo-science, with its wire-drawn ...
— Light, Life, and Love • W. R. Inge
... would easily take sides with the sceptics whereever it is allowed by the inviolable authority of Holy Scripture and the decrees of the Church.' 'What is exempt from error?' All subtle contentions of theological speculation arise from a dangerous curiosity and lead to impious audacity. What have all the great controversies about the Trinity and the Virgin Mary profited? 'We have defined so much that without danger to our salvation might have remained unknown or undecided.... The essentials of our religion are peace ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... her toilette as neatly and rapidly as she could, her mind all the time so full of speculation and a deep restrained excitement that she ceased to trouble herself in the least about her gown, As for her hair, she arranged it almost mechanically, caring only that its black masses should be smooth and in order. She fastened at her throat a small turquoise brooch that had been her ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... conceives that this belief in universally distributed personality (the word 'Animism' is not very clear) was the result of an historical necessity—not of speculation, but of language. 'Roots were all, or nearly all, expressive of action. . . . Hence a river could only be called or conceived as a runner, or a roarer, or a defender; and in all these capacities always as something active ...
— Modern Mythology • Andrew Lang
... I to myself. 'I believed him to be doing well—but I did not know he was master of a mansion like this.' Cutting short all marvelling; speculation, conjecture, &c., I advanced to the front door and rang. A man-servant opened it—I announced myself—he relieved me of my wet cloak and carpet-bag, and ushered me into a room furnished as a library, where there was a bright fire and candles burning on the table; ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... however faint, of making money by this speculation, and the fear of offending the depositary of his great secret, compelled at length from Allcraft a reluctant acquiescence. He consented to the trial, receiving Planner's solemn promise that, in the event of failure, it should be the last. Planner himself, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... slowly. "Ah, M'sieur Bang—Bingle, may I not leave the question of sex to the child itself? What could be more beautiful than to present to your notice a perfect example of humanity, without uttering a single word to aid you in your speculation as to the gender, and then to sit calmly back and relish the joy you will reveal when you find that you have guessed correctly the very first time, as the boys would say? That would be the magnificent ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon
... events this week that I know of, except his Grace of Bedford's(51) appearance at Court. His eyes are a ghastly object. He seems blind himself, and makes every [one] else so that looks at him. They have no speculation in them, as Shakespear says; what should be white is red, and there is no sight or crystal, only a black spot. It alters his countenance, and he looks like a man in a tragedy, as in K[ing] Lear, that has had his eyes put out with ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue
... make his wealth a continual anxiety to him: ay, he may make it, by ambition, covetousness, and wild speculation, the cause of his shame and ruin; if only ...
— The Good News of God • Charles Kingsley
... Antarctica: Speculation over the existence of a "southern land" was not confirmed until the early 1820s when British and American commercial operators and British and Russian national expeditions began exploring the Peninsula region and areas south of the Antarctic Circle. Not until 1838 ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... bombastic language which was habitual to him. He advertised Shakespeare as 'our ever-living poet.' As the chief promoter of the undertaking, he called himself 'the well-wishing adventurer in setting forth,' and in resonant phrase designated as the patron of the venture a partner in the speculation, 'Mr. W. H.' In the conventional dedicatory formula of the day he wished 'Mr. W. H.' 'all happiness' and 'eternity,' such eternity as Shakespeare in the text of the sonnets conventionally foretold for his own verse. When Thorpe was organising the issue of Marlowe's ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... Mrs. Lincoln to myself throw a flood of light upon the history of the "old clothes" speculation ...
— Behind the Scenes - or, Thirty years a slave, and Four Years in the White House • Elizabeth Keckley
... hour of accomplished love is, perhaps, the only passage in a man's life with which he is perfectly satisfied. It is the only reality that does not disappoint the dream of expectation. There is no region of speculation beyond it—its horizon bounds his world—its present engulfs his past and his future. In all other circumstances, it is ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... one to enjoy the fruits of good acts and Vedic rites.[812] Thus diverse kinds of speculations arise in the mind. Whether this opinion is right or that is right, there is no means of settling. Engaged in reflecting on those opinions, particular persons follow particular lines of speculation. The understandings of these, directed to particular theories, become wholly taken up with them and are at last entirely lost in them. Thus all men are rendered miserable by pursuits, good or bad. The Vedas alone, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... first overtook him on the Colchester road. I hate politics as a subject of conversation; it is too wide a field for chit-chat, and too often ends in angry discussion. How long he continued this train of speculation I do not know, but, judging by the different aspect of the country, I must have slept ...
— The Clockmaker • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... hate speculation. I should have thought you might be contented with your station; but that is the worst of merchants,—they never know when to stop. I suppose your ambition is to make this a great overgrown mansion, so that your father would not know ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the smallest ones; the man who owned six slaves was far more apt to extort the utmost possible work from them than the planter who owned three or four hundred. And the worst masters of all were those who, having made a little money in trade or speculation in the towns, purchased a dozen slaves, a small piece of land, and tried ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... rise on each side from 200 to 300 feet, and the whole appearance of the country shows that there has been little change in the form of the surface since the basalt was poured into the valley. On the banks of a small creek we saw a flock of tribonyx—a bird which has created some speculation as to its proper habitat, as it often makes its appearance in large numbers at the Swan ...
— Journals of Australian Explorations • A C and F T Gregory
... principally addressed their conversation to her, and had manoeuvred, particularly the young ones, to sit as near her as possible. The Rev Jonathan Prothero had the place of honour at her right, and did not take up much of her time. He appeared to be deep in the speculation concerning the ancient castle of which we have already heard, and was learnedly descanting upon it to Mrs Rice Rice, a lady on his other side. The said Mrs Rice Rice, having un oeil aux champs, et l'autre a la ville, was ostensibly listening to him, whilst she ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... the Indian Philosophies.] The Greeks, starting from physical phenomena, went on in successive series of inquiries, until they elevated themselves above matter, above experience, even to the loftiest abstractions, and until they classified the laws of thought. It is curious how speculation led to demonstration, and how inquiries into the world of matter prepared the way for the solution of intellectual phenomena. Philosophy kept pace with geometry, and those who observed nature also gloried in abstruse calculations. Philosophy and mathematics ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... take with him two hundred and fifty rix-dollars in gold, a noble was allowed to take four hundred; for it may be observed, in passing, that Frederic studiously kept up the old distinction between the nobles and the community. In speculation, he was a French philosopher, but in action, a German prince. He talked and wrote about the privileges of blood in the style of Sieyes; but in practice no chapter in the empire looked with a keener eye to ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... carnivorous spectre, flaps its dusky wings along the sky of sociology, now saddened Mrs. Singleton's meditations, as she watched the lengthening shadow cast by the tower upon the court-yard; but she was not addicted to abstract speculation, and the words of her favorite hymn epitomized her thoughts: "Though every prospect pleases, and only ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... the book, I fell into a speculation concerning the mixture of the two elements in man's nature. The life of an individual is usually, it seemed to me, a series of RESULTS, the processes leading to which are not often visible, or observed when they ...
— Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home • Bayard Taylor
... 'bumping and squealing,'" laughed Kate. "And Miss Marjorie, too! The orthodox groan and glide would be more like her style." Then her mind wandered to a story connected with that lady, which had given rise to much speculation on the part of the young Clares. Half a century ago there lived at the Briars a family consisting of a brother and two sisters; the former a gay young spendthrift of twenty-five; the girls, Anna, aged twenty, ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... secretly relieved. Even Mrs. Dwight's vision of future prosperity had faded. She had been justified in believing that her sister Eliza would make a will in favor of her family, but unfortunately Mrs. Goring had amused herself with speculation in her old age, and had left barely enough to pay her ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... others were tempting him with glittering bribes? And again, why the deceit practiced on Pepito, by assuming the guise of a doctor? Each of these facts was a text on which I piled a mountain of speculation. ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... Circular, 1836.—The first result of the removal of the deposits was very different from what Jackson had expected. At this time there was active speculation in Western lands. Men who had a little spare money bought Western lands. Those who had no money in hand, borrowed money from the banks and with it bought Western lands. Now it happened that many of the "pet ...
— A Short History of the United States • Edward Channing
... The current economic situation is marked by strong growth coupled with worsening imbalances. Real GDP expanded by about 7% in 1996 but inflation rose to 80%, the current account deficit reached about 3% of GDP, and the public sector fiscal deficit probably topped 10% of GDP, leading to speculation that the country could be headed toward a repeat of its 1994 financial crisis. To some extent, Ankara is caught in a vicious circle because half of all central government revenue in 1996 went to pay interest on the national ...
— The 1997 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... the town to consist of one long adobe house. The beach was low and sandy, and we were wet somewhat in wading through a light surf to get on shore. We had on board a Mr. Baylis, who we afterward learned came down with Capt. Lackey on a big speculation which was to capture all the wild goats they could on Catalina Island, and take them to San ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly
... speculation concerning Dan Baxter, and when the Rovers went back to the island on the steam tug,—to obtain what had been discovered in the cave,—they asked the Canadian on the wreck if he ...
— The Rover Boys on the Great Lakes • Arthur M. Winfield
... great speculation as to which team would win the game, but Billy Dibble, aided by the wonderful interference on the part of Babe Eddie, who afterward played end on the Yale team, and Emerson, who, had he gone to college, would ...
— Football Days - Memories of the Game and of the Men behind the Ball • William H. Edwards
... for each period, with entire certainty, the limits and character of political action: in other words, introducing into the study of social phenomena the same positive spirit which has regenerated every other branch of human speculation.[4] ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... more'n a twelvemonth, and we've only killed three fish in all that time. Got jammed up here in the ice all last winter. I stayed in hopes of doin' something in the sealing line, and only got some three hundred skins after all. It's been a bad speculation for me. An old friend of mine came this way the year before last, and, the season being an open one and not much ice about, he reached as far north as Baffin's Bay and through Jones' Sound, fillin' his ship with oil and bone in a single season. He was lucky enough to hit upon a spot where ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... limits of time and space, but it was not often that he could give more than a speculative assent to even the most improbable of creeds. Always seeking fixity, his mind was too fluid for any anchor to hold in it. He drifted from speculation to speculation, often seeming to forget his aim by the way, in almost the collector's delight over the curiosities he had found in passing. On one page of his letters he writes earnestly to the atheist Thelwall in defence of Christianity; on another page we find him saying, "My Spinosism (if Spinosism ...
— Poems of Coleridge • Coleridge, ed Arthur Symons
... either as a blind, or through remorse, or (as I incline to think) through an amiability born of triumph; there was at times even a touch of commiseration in her manner, and more than once she spoke to me, in a tone of philosophical speculation, on the uselessness of endeavouring to repress natural feelings and the futility of treating as children persons who were already grown up. This mood lasted some time, so long, I suppose, as the stolen delight of doing the thing was more prominent than the delight ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... only advance it to emphasize my belief that there is need for the adoption of some system which shall be automatic and open to all sound banks, so as to avoid all possibility of discrimination and favoritism. Such a plan would tend to prevent the spasms of high money and speculation which now obtain in the New York market; for at present there is too much currency at certain seasons of the year, and its accumulation at New York tempts bankers to lend it at low rates for speculative purposes; whereas at other times when the crops are being moved ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... over the whole concern; for, having put the most money into the speculation, he was resolved to make it pay,—as if any thing founded on an ideal basis could be expected to do ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... proof of human weakness that there is no movement however beneficent, no doctrine however sound, no truth however absolute, but that it can be speciously so extended, so expanded, so emphasized as to lose its identity. Coincident with the political speculation of the eighteenth century appeared the storm and stress of romanticism and sentimentalism. The extremes of morbid personal emotion were thought serviceable for daily life, while the middle course of applying ideals to experience ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... figure, "there still remain some half dozen old inns, which have preserved their external features unchanged, and which have escaped alike the rage for public improvement and the encroachments of private speculation. Great, rambling, queer old places they are, with galleries, and passages, and staircases, wide enough and antiquated enough to furnish materials for a hundred ghost stories.... It was in the yard of ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley
... I was so entirely ignorant of her surroundings that I had not even a starting-place for speculation. So I went in, leaving the window open. It seemed that this being so made one barrier the less between us. I gathered the cushions and rugs from before the fire, which was no longer leaping, but burning with a steady glow, and put them back in their ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker
... suit-case, and the sticks of dynamite and the fuses and the clock; also of the "studio" in which the Reds had been trapped, and of Nikitin, the Russian anarchist who owned this den. Also there were columns of speculation about the case, signed statements and interviews with leading clergymen and bankers, the president of the Chamber of Commerce and the secretary of the Real Estate Exchange. Also there was a two-column, double-leaded editorial, pointing out how the "Times" had been saying ...
— 100%: The Story of a Patriot • Upton Sinclair
... little is known that we are not even acquainted with his Christian name. There is no certificate of baptism, no moldy tombstone, no musty washing-bill in the world on which we can hook the smallest line of speculation whether it was John, or James, or Joshua, or Tom, or Dick, or Billy Anon. Shame that a man should write so much, and yet be known so little. Oblivion uses its snuffers, sometimes, very unjustly. On second thoughts, perhaps, it is as well that the works of Anon were not collected together. His ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... by the Valley, and now occupied a line east of the Blue Ridge; Jackson remained yet at Bunker Hill. We heard that Burnside had superseded McClellan; speculation was rife as to the character of the new commander. It was easy to believe that the Federal army would soon give us work to do; its change of leaders clearly showed aggressive purpose, McClellan being distinguished more for caution than for ...
— Who Goes There? • Blackwood Ketcham Benson
... pretensions, he had met early in life the Duc d'Orleans, who had led him into the gay Parisian world of which he was the leader. After a brief military career in Africa, he resigned from the army, and divided his interest between politics and speculation. He employed his leisure moments in writing very indifferent plays, which, although published under a nom de guerre (St. Remy), he depended upon the servility of the Parisian press to carry through. He was not a deep thinker, nor was his intellectual ...
— Maximilian in Mexico - A Woman's Reminiscences of the French Intervention 1862-1867 • Sara Yorke Stevenson
... on his tactics? Of course they could! Were they not, they argued, better actors and had they not more experience as managers? Of course they were, and had! Where Handy had made twenties and fifties, might not they pick up hundreds? Of course there could be no doubt on that score. All this kind of speculation in words, however, ended only in talk. Those who indulged in it were mere theorists—not men of action and active brain like the commander of the Gem of the Ocean expedition, who put into execution his plans after ...
— A Pirate of Parts • Richard Neville
... the present day, we should look for in vain even in the most complete and systematic treatises on the history of philosophy published in Germany. Nor does this arise from any wish to depreciate the results of English speculation in general. On the contrary, we find that Hobbes, Locke, Berkeley, and Hume are treated with great respect. They occupy well-marked positions in the progress of philosophic thought. Their names are written in ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... which have a mere speculative importance, there is no danger in giving rein to speculation; but on those of such real and intense practical importance as the security against hostile aggression of the great city and port of New York, it is not admissible to set aside the experience of the past, or the opinions of the best ...
— Elements of Military Art and Science • Henry Wager Halleck
... ethics that Abelard showed greatest activity of philosophical thought; laying very particular stress upon the subjective intention as determining, if not the moral character, at least the moral value, of human action. His thought in this direction, wherein he anticipated something of modern speculation, is the more remarkable because his scholastic successors accomplished least in the field of morals, hardly venturing to bring the principles and rules of conduct under pure philosophical discussion, even after the great ethical inquiries ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... things, as the Indian calls the bright-coloured pebbles, shell beads, base turquoises, crystals, etc., with which he decorates his body. He liked to see his daughter shine among the daughters of the tribe. With him it was speculation, not affection; but Mitsha knew nothing of this, and felt that in case her parent should ever be borne back to this house dead, and placed on the floor before her covered with gore, she must feel just as Okoya felt now. And yet the dead man was only his grandparent. No, it was not possible for ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... fellow in many ways; liberal with his money (indeed, apt to be lavish), and kind-hearted, but self-willed, effeminate, and impulsive. He had also—which was a source of great alarm and grief to his father—a marked taste for speculation. ...
— Stories By English Authors: Italy • Various
... Background: Speculation over the existence of a "southern land" was not confirmed until the early 1820s when British and American commercial operators and British and Russian national expeditions began exploring the Antarctic Peninsula region and other areas south of the Antarctic Circle. ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... revealed himself to all nations by his Logos, or Word. Christianity is its highest revelation. The common Christian lives by faith, but the more advanced believer has gnosis, or philosophic insight of Christianity as the eternal law of the soul. This doctrine soon substituted speculation in place of the simplicity of early Christianity. The influence of Alexandrian thought was increased by the high culture which prevailed there, and by the book-trade of this Egyptian city. All the oldest manuscripts of the Bible now extant ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... of roses, addressed to Miss Cynthia Wetherell, which was delivered on Christmas morning. If there had been a card, Susan Merrill would certainly have found it. There was no card. There was much pretended speculation on the part of the Merrill girls as to the sender, sly reference to Cynthia's heightened color, and several attempts to pin on her dress a bunch of the flowers, and Susan declared that one of them would look stunning in her hair. They were put ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... might be many things upon the other side; so she did what Flamborough generally does, when desirous to consider things, as it generally is. That is to say, she stood with her feet well apart, and her arms akimbo, and her head thrown back to give the hinder part a rest, and no sign of speculation in her eyes, although they certainly were not dull. When these good people are in this frame of mind and body, it is hard to say whether they look more wise or foolish. Mr. Mordacks, impatient as he was, even after so fine a dinner, was not far from catching the infection ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... the Home, mind, memory, hope and energy were shattered. The only animating thought remaining to me was a misty speculation as to where the next drink was to come from. I had a kind of feeble perception that a few days more of the life I was leading must end my earthly career, but I didn't care. As to the 'hereafter'—that might take care of itself; I had no energy to ...
— Grappling with the Monster • T. S. Arthur
... well, until one fine morning he was found trying to cut his throat, and had to be locked up. Well, he was soon out again that time, and things went on straight enough for eight or nine years, by which time he had done very well—made a lot of money by speculation—and was thinking of retiring from business altogether. Then, perhaps it was the extra pressure of his increased business, but, at any rate, he broke out again, tried to murder his wife that time, and did, in fact, injure her so much ...
— The Wharf by the Docks - A Novel • Florence Warden
... lot," said the headmaster sadly. "I wish there was, but only those boys come here who are notoriously too good to become current coin in the world unless they are hardened with an alloy of vice. I should have liked to show you our gambling, book-making, and speculation class, but the assistant-master who attends to this branch of our curriculum is gone to Sunch'ston this afternoon. He has friends who have asked him to see the dedication of the new temple, and he will not be back till Monday. I really do not know what I can do better for ...
— Erewhon Revisited • Samuel Butler
... unfairness of ecclesiastical corporations. I was afterwards confirmed by Neander in the belief that the Apocalypse is a false prophecy. The only chapter of it which is interpreted,—the 17th,—appears to be a political speculation suggested by the civil war of Otho, Vitellius and Vespasian; and erroneously opines that the eighth emperor of Rome is to be the last, and is to be one of the preceding emperors restored,—probably Nero, ...
— Phases of Faith - Passages from the History of My Creed • Francis William Newman
... matter is composed of minute discrete particles, prevailing in the Greek schools. These "elements," however, had not the significance of the elements of to-day; they connoted physical appearances or qualities rather than chemical relations; and the atomic theory of the ancients is a speculation based upon metaphysical considerations, having, in its origin, nothing in common with the modern molecular theory, which was based upon experimentally observed properties ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various
... which little concerns those who went to study and learn, and those who three years later have to describe. If the darkening of the imperial exchequer prove more than a passing shadow, and an ultimate loss on the speculation cease to be matter of question, the few millions it cost may be recovered by the disbanding of a regiment or two. For one brigade, out of half a million soldiers, to bring the world and its wealth to the seat of government, is doing better ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... Mauleverer; the affair made a noise, and I feared to endanger you all if I appeared in the vicinity of the robbery. Since then, business diverted my thoughts; we formed the plan of trying a matrimonial speculation at Bath. I came hither,—guess ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... often the proceedings are tainted with corruption. A member of Congress ought to receive $7,500 and a Cabinet officer cannot live in a manner corresponding to his station upon less than $15,000. Adequate salaries would not prevent speculation on the part of public officers, but they could not offer as an excuse for their acts the meager salaries allowed by the government. From the "salary grab" bill there were two good results. The President's salary was increased to $50,000 and the justices of the Supreme Court received $10,000 ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 2 • George S. Boutwell
... family to which we belong, and even go back with you to the acephalous mollusk, first cousin to the clams and mussels, whose rudimental spine was the hinted prophecy of humanity; all this time never dreaming, apparently, that what she takes for a matter of curious speculation involves the whole future ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... in useless speculation one sultry August evening when old Ben, my body servant, handed me a telegram. Tearing ...
— The Gods of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... But speculation gave way before the interest of movement. Now the silhouette of the sky-line was dancing before his eyes. In the moonlight he could clearly make out the passing of a driven herd. It came on, losing itself in the shadows of a distant ...
— The Forfeit • Ridgwell Cullum
... the impenetrable depths of abstraction and pure speculation, situated, so to speak, above all dogmas, propose their ideas to God. Their prayer audaciously offers discussion. Their adoration interrogates. This is direct religion, which is full of anxiety and responsibility for him who attempts its ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... balls, which served as scent-bottles], and boxes of orange comfits, and cups of tamarisk wood, and aqua mirabilis, and song books, and virginals [the predecessor of the piano] and viols [violins], and his portrait in little, and playing tables [backgammon], and speculation glasses [probably magnifying glasses], and cinnamon water, and sugar-candy, and fine Venice paper ...
— Joyce Morrell's Harvest - The Annals of Selwick Hall • Emily Sarah Holt
... to the operatic speculation; and when he had to leave the Haymarket Theatre, which was given up to another Italian company with the famous Farinelli, from Lincoln's Inn Fields, undauntedly he changed to the Lincoln's Inn Fields Theatre, and there commenced again. More ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... brotherhood. To attain this consummation so devoutly to be wished, I would eat no flesh, I would drink no wine while the world lasted. I would become as devoted an ascetic as yourself, my dear Isaac. But to what end is all speculation, all dreaming, all questioning, but to advance humanity, to bring forward the manifestation of the Son of God? Oh, for men who feel this idea burning into their bones! When shall we see them? And without them, what will be phalanxes, ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... much speculation was caused when General Joffre visited London at the end of October and held another conference with Lord Kitchener. It was generally understood that some scheme for central military control was being promoted, to render quicker decisions and coordinate action possible. It was obvious ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume IV (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... summer, who took a fine house for you at Aix-la-Chapelle? and, starting you on a matrimonial speculation, so dazzled and decoyed old baron Ravensburg, that he not only invited us to his chateau here, but selected you to be his son's wife, the wife to the hero of Palestine. And yet, though I told you, modern friends followed new houses as naturally as rats run from old ones, you were for ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 6, June 1810 • Various
... a brig anchored half a mile to the southward of us: she proved to be the San Antonio; she left Port Jackson four days after us, and was bound on a trading speculation to the Moluccas and Singapore. In the forenoon I visited the master, Mr. Hemmans, and offered him my guidance up the coast, if he would wait until we had shifted our defective masts; but he declined it as he was anxious to get on without delay; and, having Captain Flinders' ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King
... accustomed to speculation, encountered many a dangerous doubt, but he only needed to gaze at the crucified Saviour to find the way again to ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... "You'll have to arrange that yourself," he answered. "Can't you think up a scheme? For instance, go to him with a proposal like the old schemes he used to finance. He is very much interested in electrical inventions. He made his money by speculation in telegraphs and telephones in the early days when they were more or less dreams. I should think a wireless system of television might at least interest him and furnish an excuse for getting in, although I am told ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... perfected outcome of learning,—its consummation. What is known, in a given case, is what is sure, certain, settled, disposed of; that which we think with rather than that which we think about. In its honorable sense, knowledge is distinguished from opinion, guesswork, speculation, and mere tradition. In knowledge, things are ascertained; they are so and not dubiously otherwise. But experience makes us aware that there is difference between intellectual certainty of subject matter and our certainty. We are made, so to speak, for belief; credulity is ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey
... after the hum of the traffic has subsided—when the rare pedestrian and the rarer cab alone traverse the deserted highway. With more intimate cares seeking to claim my mind, it was good to tramp along the echoing, empty streets and to indulge in imaginative speculation regarding the strange things that night must shroud in every big city. I have known the solitude of deserts, but the solitude of London is ...
— The Hand Of Fu-Manchu - Being a New Phase in the Activities of Fu-Manchu, the Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... "Be good! if we occupy our minds with conduct, we won't have room for speculation, which never made a soul better or happier, anyhow. Yes, it's all nonsense, and I shall tell Helen so; there is too much tendency among young people to talk about things they don't understand, and it results in a superficial, skin-deep ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... "unsettling" or even movement was eliminated from her future. To solidify the forces of mind into the inherited mould of fixed beliefs was, in the opinion of the age, to achieve the definite end of all education. When the child ceased to wonder before the veil of appearances, the battle of orthodoxy with speculation was over, and Miss Priscilla felt that she could rest on her victory. With Susan she had failed, because the daughter of Cyrus Treadwell was one of those inexplicable variations from ancestral stock over which the naturalists were still waging their merry war; but ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... admitted to have been the most eminent and important of that interesting group of thinkers whom the overthrow of old institutions in France turned towards social speculation. Vastly superior as he was to men like De Maistre on the one hand, and to men like Saint Simon or Fourier on the other, as well in scientific acquisitions as in mental capacity, still the aim and interest of all his thinking was also theirs, namely, the renovation of the conditions ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 10: Auguste Comte • John Morley
... Then the speculation as to her nationality began. French? assuredly not. English? ridiculous! Equally so German. Italian? perhaps. Russian? ...
— Three Weeks • Elinor Glyn
... speculation to imagine what the intellectual development of Europe would have been, had secular learning been commended by the monks, and the common people encouraged to exercise their minds without fear of excommunication or death. It is sad to reflect how many great thoughts must have perished still-born ...
— A Short History of Monks and Monasteries • Alfred Wesley Wishart
... and found every heart full of serious speculation. Dick was especially affected, for he had hoped to see ...
— The Rover Boys on the Ocean • Arthur M. Winfield
... go through fire and water for a sight of a game of baseball. Till that moment he had been regarding himself as the nearest approach to that dizzy eminence. He had braved great perils to see this game. Even in this moment his mind would not wholly detach itself from speculation as to what his wife would say to him when he slunk back into the fold. But what had he risked compared with this man Benyon? Mr Birdsey glowed. He could not restrain his sympathy and admiration. True, the man was a criminal. He had robbed a bank of a hundred thousand dollars. But, after all, what ...
— The Man with Two Left Feet - and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... to complete his study of winter-resort manners and morals, Thyrsis encountered a college acquaintance whose father had become enormously rich through a mining speculation, and was here with a party of friends in a private-train. So he was whirled off in one of half a dozen automobiles, and rode for a hundred miles or so to an inland lake, and sat down to an al fresco luncheon ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... capacity of enjoyment by excess, and had deprived himself of the consolations of religion by infidelity. His unbelief was not like Shelley's—the growth of his own mind, and the fruit of unbridled, though earnest, speculation;—it was merely a drug which he snatched from the laboratories of others to deaden his remorse, and enable him to look with desperate calmness to the blotted Past and the lowering Future. At this stage of his career, he became acquainted with Bishop ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... ether but of life itself? The seeming duality of mind and matter, of the soul and body, must terminate somewhere, must merge in identity. Whether that identity be the Creator of theology or the soul of speculation does not much matter, since the final result is the same, namely, the immortality of that suprasumption, ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy
... depths of our talk, and expanded, like the one the fisherman released from the copper vessel, until they blotted everything bright from our vision. Insensibly, we yielded to the occult force that swayed us, and indulged in gloomy speculation. We had talked some time upon the proneness of the human mind to mysticism, and the almost universal love of the terrible, when Hammond suddenly said to me. "What do you consider to be the greatest ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... am I impelled to be virtuous rather than vicious? Whence is the motive derived which should impel me to one line of conduct in preference to the other? This, which is a practical question, and, therefore, more interesting than the other, which is a pure question of speculation, was that which Paley believed himself to be answering. And his answer was,—That utility, a perception of the resulting benefit, was the true determining motive. Meantime, it was objected that often ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... forbear. During that first period of his business career which had been called his early bad manner he had been little more than a gambler of genius, his hand against every man's, an infant prodigy who brought to the enthralling pursuit of speculation a brain better endowed than any opposed to it. At St. Helena it was laid down that war is une belle occupation, and so the young Manderson had found the multitudinous and complicated dog-fight of the ...
— The Woman in Black • Edmund Clerihew Bentley
... a complete and triumphant success. When Count Rumford wrote his account of it, it had been five years in operation; it was, financially, a paying speculation, and had not only banished beggary, but had wrought an entire change in the manners, habits, and very appearance of the most abandoned and degraded people in the kingdom."—("Count ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... be a curious speculation (at least for those who think that the characters of men never change, though manners, opinions, and institutions may) to know what has become of this character of the Sompnoure in the present day; whether or not it has ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... the rainy season set in, and thus realize the imaginary fortune that I had expected from my interest in the company. In the following spring I had twelve houses constructed. The main point upon which my speculation seemed to rest was to get them to San Francisco before the rainy season commenced. I went to New York to secure freight for them in the fastest vessel. Fortunately for me, as I conceived at the time, I found the day before I arrived in New York, the Prince de Joinville, a Havre packet ship, ...
— The Adventures of a Forty-niner • Daniel Knower
... fractures are not of very rare occurrence, their recognition is not easy, and there is more of speculation than of certainty pertaining to their diagnosis. The animal is very lame and spares the injured foot as much as possible, sometimes resting it upon the toe alone and sometimes holding it from the ground. The foot is very tender, and the exploring ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... self-imposed training in the interests of furthering their military efficiency. No one of them was a born writer. There is no such thing. Nor did any one of them owe his abilities as a writer to any other person. Writers are self-made. But it is a reasonable speculation that history might never have heard of the greater number of these men had they not worked sedulously to become proficient with the pen as well as with the sword. Granting that they had other sound military qualities in the beginning, an acquired ability to express themselves lucidly and with ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense
... exercise of the intellect on matters which for long were regarded as beyond the reach of rationalistic explanation. There was much difference of opinion among the thinkers as to the limits to be assigned to such freedom of speculation on the mysteries of the faith, some starting from the standpoint of idealists and endeavouring to avoid the logical consequences of their speculations; while others, adopting so far as possible a position of pure ...
— The Church and the Empire - Being an Outline of the History of the Church - from A.D. 1003 to A.D. 1304 • D. J. Medley
... nation in resorting to extreme remedies. The great majority of the profession still held the doctrine of passive obedience: but that majority was now divided into two sections. A question, which, before the Revolution, had been mere matter of speculation, and had therefore, though sometimes incidentally raised, been, by most persons, very superficially considered, had now become practically most important. The doctrine of passive obedience being taken for granted, to whom ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... savey that Simpson aimed to be a sharp on doctrine?" A cow-puncher with a squint addressed the table in general. "I scents the aroma of dogma about Simpson in the way he throwed his conversational lariat at the yearling. He urbanes at her, and then comes his 'firstly,' it being a speculation as to her late grazing-ground, which he concludes to be the East. His 'secondly' ain't nothing startling, words familiar to us all from our mother's knee—'nice weather'—the congregation ain't visibly moved. His 'thirdly' is insinuating. In it he hints that it ain't good for man ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... further fighting were eagerly welcomed by the troops, and especially by those who had arrived too late for the relief of Chakdara, and had had thus far, only long and dusty marches to perform. There was much speculation and excitement as to what units would be selected, every one asserting that his regiment was sure to go; that it was their turn; and that if they were not taken it would ...
— The Story of the Malakand Field Force • Sir Winston S. Churchill
... faith; but a colporteur of religious books informed us the other day that he was continually being asked for the Shun-pao. Now the Shun-pao owes its success so far to the fact that it is a pure money speculation, and therefore an undertaking intelligible enough to all Chinamen. Not only are its columns closed to anything like proselytising articles, but they are open from time to time to such tit-bits of the miraculous as are calculated ...
— Chinese Sketches • Herbert A. Giles
... the child's mind are concerned in the causation of habit spasm. In the early stages the movement is sometimes due to imitation, but the susceptibility of the child to suggestion plays the chief part in determining its persistence. It is an interesting speculation how far tricks of gesture, attitude, or gait are inherited and how far they are acquired by imitation. A child by some characteristic gesture may strikingly call to mind a parent who died in his infancy. A whole family may show a peculiarity of gait which is at once recognisable. ...
— The Nervous Child • Hector Charles Cameron |
