"Unquestioning" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... permit me to romance a little,) seizing every delight as it offered itself, under an instinctive impression that there were nothing but delights to be met with, eating when he was hungry, drinking when he was thirsty, sleeping when he was tired, and so on, in unquestioning trust of his natural impulses. But then, as he learnt by experience how evil follows good, and pleasure often enough is bought by pain, he would begin, would he not, instead of simply accepting Good where ...
— The Meaning of Good—A Dialogue • G. Lowes Dickinson
... with the unquestioning readiness of a faithful hound. The others followed suit with the open eyes of ...
— The Fugitives - The Tyrant Queen of Madagascar • R.M. Ballantyne
... ignorance wonders abound, prodigies occur, and miracles become common, The untaught masses are easily deceived, and their unreasoning credulity enables them to proudly boast of their unquestioning faith. When their feelings are excited and their passions aroused by professional evangelists, they even profess to believe that which they cannot comprehend; and, in the satirical language of Bulwer, they ...
— The Fallen Star; and, A Dissertation on the Origin of Evil • E. L. Bulwer; and, Lord Brougham
... other means of achieving intimacy with a woman as inexperienced as little Mrs Desmond, and he would get Linda to help him. Linda was a good girl, if a trifle stupid. At least she had the merit of believing in him and obeying his wishes with unquestioning fidelity—a very creditable merit in the eyes of the ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... fast to the fence. There are eleven cows, but not one of them can be milked out of the bail—chiefly because their teats are sore. The selector does not know what makes the teats sore, but he has an unquestioning faith in a certain ointment, recommended to him by a man who knows less about cows than he does himself, which he causes to be applied at irregular intervals—leaving the mode of application to the discretion of his son. Meanwhile ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... in military, in industrial, in artistic development and achievement. Japanese soldiers and sailors have shown themselves equal in combat to any of whom history makes note. She has produced great generals and mighty admirals; her fighting men, afloat and ashore, show all the heroic courage, the unquestioning, unfaltering loyalty, the splendid indifference to hardship and death, which marked the Loyal Ronins; and they show also that they possess the highest ideal of patriotism. Japanese artists of every kind see ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... that no faults of the elders were dwelt upon by a loyal temper. To find fault was thought so wrong that the defects were scarcely seen, and were concealed from ourselves as well as others. It would scarcely, I suppose, be possible to go back to that unquestioning state, now the temper of the times is changed; but I belong enough to the older days to believe that the true safety is in submission in the spirit as well ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... mother, now?" I asked, thinking that these sudden tidings might change all plans and purposes; but they did not; for the man received the order of the Divine Commander to march, with the same unquestioning obedience with which the soldier had received that of the human one, doubtless remembering that the first led him to life, and the last ...
— On Picket Duty and Other Tales • Louisa May Alcott
... juster; with a finer sense of right and wrong, and less bestial modes of pleasure, of speech, and of habit, because he was among them. Moreover, the keen-eyed desperadoes who made up the chief sum of his comrades saw that he gave unquestioning respect to a chief who made his life a hell; and rendered unquestioning submission under affronts, tyrannies, and insults which, as they also saw, stung him to the quick, and tortured him as no physical torture ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... accepted the belated efforts of my school-fellows to knock the intelligence out of me as so many tributes to the force of my individuality. I no longer cried in my bed at night, but lay awake enraptured at the profundity of my thoughts. After years of unquestioning humility I enjoyed a prolonged debauch of intellectual pride, and I marvelled at the little boy of yesterday who had wept because he could not be an imbecile. It was the apotheosis of the ugly duckling, and I saw my swan's plumage reflected in the placid ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton
... must have confidence, unquestioning confidence, I meant confidence in the genuine ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... rebelliousness was evident. The men acted more like inquisitive sheep. They were of that abject variety of poor whites who accept the rains from heaven and bow to the reign of authority with the same unquestioning resignation. ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... with the slaves to raise the breastworks, and men turned blankly to ask one another "Where is the army?" With the girl the question meant only mystification; she felt none of the white terror that showed in the faces round her. There was in her heart an unquestioning, childlike trust in the God of battles—sooner or later he would declare for the Confederacy and until then—well, there was always General Lee to stand between. Her chief regret was that the lines had closed and her mother could not come to her as ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... authority and its unquestioning acceptance is itself largely due to that resistless advance of physical science which has reconstructed the world for us with such masterful hands. The results of the modern conception of the universe are only just beginning to get into our system; as yet they are still largely unassimilated, ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... the same unquestioning recognition that falls to the great warriors or those supreme in science, art or literature. Not in their own lifetime and hardly to this day have the claims to supremacy of our own Oliver Cromwell, William III. and Lord Chatham rested on so sure a foundation ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... exclaimed, pointing to a spot back of them. "See the curious bird!" They wheeled instantly, with the unquestioning faith of two children; and before they had brought their gazes back again, the big man had seized Rolla, crushed her to his breast and kissed her passionately. She responded just as warmly, pushing him away only in order to avoid being ...
— The Devolutionist and The Emancipatrix • Homer Eon Flint
... droop of his moustaches, the downward ray of his glance, and the proud, nimble carriage of his great limbs,—and formed in her mind the image of an ideal. An image regarded not with any tenderness, but with naive admiration, and unquestioning respect! And yet also with more than that, for when she dwelt on his glance, she had a slight transient feeling of faintness which came and went in a second, and which she did not analyse—and could not ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... cannot live without some guiding rule. If his speculations in Nature will yield him nothing on which he may rely, he will seek some other aid. If there be no criterion of truth for him in philosophy, he will lean on implicit, unquestioning faith. If he cannot prove by physical arguments the existence of God, he will, with Socrates, accept that great fact as self evident and needing no demonstration. He will, in like manner, take his stand upon the undeniable advantages of virtue and good morals, defending the doctrine ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... it is not unsafe to assert that nowhere did the original spirit of State Sovereignty and allegiance to the State then survive in greater intensity and more unquestioning form than in Virginia—the 'Old Dominion'—the mother of States and ...
— The Creed of the Old South 1865-1915 • Basil L. Gildersleeve
... lovely springing leap, like a wind, the Mino was upon her, and had boxed her twice, very definitely, with a white, delicate fist. She sank and slid back, unquestioning. He walked after her, and cuffed her once or twice, leisurely, with sudden little blows of ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... ventured to plead with her not to go back to her home where her servants provided a kind of chaperonage, she made only a formal protest or two. He stopped at a roadside inn, a secluded place well known for its unquestioning hospitality. ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... the soutar, with one of his sudden flashes of unquestioning insight, "by the luik o' ye, ye ken that for the cry o' yer ain bairn, my bonny lass! Ye'll hae been missin him, sair, I doobt!—There! sit ye doon, and I'll hae him i' yer airms ...
— Salted With Fire • George MacDonald
... job in hand, he adjusted the linen ropes, and after a preliminary survey of the grounds, led her through the window and out on the veranda roof. Here he briefly told her what to do, suiting action to words with entire efficiency, and assuming her unquestioning obedience ...
— The Girl in the Mirror • Elizabeth Garver Jordan
... ethical doctrine. Kant was dissatisfied with this explanation of the moral life. The question, therefore, which arises is, Whence comes the idea of duty which is an undeniable fact of our experience? If it came merely from without, it could never speak to us with absolute authority, nor claim unquestioning obedience. That which comes from without depends for its justification upon some consequence external to our action, and must be based, indeed, upon some excitement of reward or pain. But that would destroy it as a moral good; since nothing can be morally good ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander
... consummate art, his position changes: and well for him if he knows, and is contented it should be so. Here he must follow, happy if he only follows and serves; and while even here he will not shelve his doubts, or blindly refuse to exercise a candid discrimination, his demur at unquestioning assent, far from betraying any arrogance, will be discreetly advanced, and ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... therefore, easily understand they did not form a high opinion of the wisdom of those who had governed them and exacted unquestioning obedience from them. ...
— The Sequel - What the Great War will mean to Australia • George A. Taylor
... devolves upon the mother in the training of her child is the establishment of her authority over him—that is, the forming in him the habit of immediate, implicit, and unquestioning obedience to all her commands. And the first step to be taken, or, rather, perhaps the first essential condition required for the performance of this duty, is the fixing of the conviction in her own mind ...
— Gentle Measures in the Management and Training of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... sentimentalizing. If she could, would she give up what she had now and go back to being the little girl, deeply satisfied with make-shift toys, which were only the foreshadowings of what was to come? If she could, would she exchange her actual room at home, for this, even to have again all the unquestioning trust in everyone and everything of the child who had died in her heart? Would she choose to give up the home where her living children had been born, at no matter what cost of horrid pain to herself, and were growing up to no matter what dark uncertainties in life, for this toy inhabited ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... to hide himself and all his projects from the unbelieving world, that which God has revealed in all faithfulness will be received only by those who have unquestioning ...
— Satan • Lewis Sperry Chafer
... before," answered the Frenchman, coolly, "and I have promised that you shall be rich. But if I am to keep my promise, you must submit yourself with unquestioning faith to my guidance. If the path we must tread together is a dark one, tread it blindly. The end will be success. And now tell me when you expect to see Douglas Dale ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... by the Romish Church. He repudiates the distinction between fundamentals and non-fundamentals in Religion, and insists that, as every truth is declared by the same infallible authority, so every truth must be received with the same unquestioning faith. He forgets that while all the truths of Scripture ought to be believed by reason of the Divine authority on which they rest, yet some truths are more directly connected with our salvation than others, as well as more clearly and explicitly revealed. Nor are we justly liable to the charge ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... corridors, ringing the rising-bell,—an act, as Miss Eastman says, symbolic of the inner awakening to come to all those girls." Thirty-nine years later, at the sound of a bell in the early morning, the household were to awake to duty for the last time in the great building. The unquestioning obedience, the prompt intelligence, the unconscious selflessness with which they obeyed that summons in the dawn of March 17, 1914, ...
— The Story of Wellesley • Florence Converse
... Year Book, 1909, "often write as if election by a bare majority was the only natural or possible mode of election, as if it was like day and night, seedtime and harvest; something fixed and in the nature of things, and not to be questioned or examined or improved." The unquestioning habit of our minds goes even farther than Mr. Dobbs suggests. For, although prior to the Redistribution Act of 1885, every great town in the United Kingdom, with the exception of London, was a parliamentary unit, yet the system of single-member ...
— Proportional Representation - A Study in Methods of Election • John H. Humphreys
... jurisdiction of the Court depended.[1] Such instances, however, have been rare. The law-abiding instinct is strong in the American people, and for the most part the decisions of the Supreme Court have been received with respect and unquestioning obedience. ...
— Our Changing Constitution • Charles Pierson
... with the two archbishops of Constantinople, John the Faster and Cyriacus; and his former friend the emperor Mauritius turned against him, so that he welcomed the accession of Phocas, as a deliverance of the Church from unjust domination. The unquestioning loyalty with which, as a civil subject, he welcomed this accession has been unfairly used against him. As first of all the civil dignitaries of the empire he could only accept what had been done at Constantinople. But in all his fourteen years ...
— The Formation of Christendom, Volume VI - The Holy See and the Wandering of the Nations, from St. Leo I to St. Gregory I • Thomas W. (Thomas William) Allies
... left him free of the higher responsibilities and the more acute penalties of transgressions, and just then Honey Tone wished devoutly that he was a field hand. He craved a black complexion instead of the halfway colour that barred him from the unquestioning comradeship of white and ...
— Lady Luck • Hugh Wiley
... most primitive, material and unquestioning stage in the growth of religious feeling, which a large portion of the Shumiro-Accadian documents from the Royal Library at Nineveh brings before us with a force and completeness which, however ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin
... implication, for she had some notion how the men who spent months together in the solitude of the prairie amused themselves in the cities. Nor had she and most of her neighbours wholly approved of the liberal views held by Heloise Durand. She had, however, an unquestioning belief in Larry, and none ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss
... reverse of comfortable to a number of gentlemen who, trained in the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas, have been accustomed to the unquestioning submission of all other sciences to their divine science of Theology. ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... silence but her soft movements, and the heavy beating of my own heart. At last she took my hand, and led me in the dark, through the salon, once more into the terrible gallery, where across the black darkness the windows admitted pale sheeted ghosts of light upon the floor. Clinging to her I went; unquestioning—for she was human sympathy to me after the isolation of my unspeakable terror. On we went, turning to the left instead of to the right, past my suite of sitting-rooms where the gilding was red with blood, into that unknown wing of the castle that fronted the main road ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... habituation, and only at such a rate of change as the circumstances governing habituation will allow. It is, at the best, slow work to shift the settled lines of any community's scheme of common sense. Now, national solidarity, and more particularly an unquestioning loyalty to the sovereign and the dynasty, is a matter of course and of commonsense necessity with the German people. It is not necessary to call to mind that the Japanese nation, which has here been coupled with the German, are in the same ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... reason, where love fails her, her desire for salvation is deeper than man's desire. And here again, and once again, we see the difference between the sexes. The woman pays the higher price for her implicit, unquestioning, and unconscious obedience to Nature. And society has made the payment still heavier. Let us for this last pity women! The dice they have had to throw in the game of life is their sex, and they have only been allowed one throw, and ...
— The Truth About Woman • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... benevolent member of the party whose pilgrimage is immortalized by Mark Twain in the Innocents Abroad. Some who had privately and wisely retained a small sum for a "rainy day" had gone off, abandoning their interest in the common weal. But many had, in the inception, with unquestioning faith, placed their all in the common stock, and were unable to extract any part thereof from the custody of Adams, who not only did not account for the funds, but by this time had taken to drink, and was generally to be seen ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... I am convinced that the loss would have exceeded the gain, but in the early years it was not possible. The Social Democrats of those days asserted that unquestioning belief in every dogma attributed to Marx was essential to social salvation, and that its only way was revolution, by which they meant, not the complete transformation of society, but its transformation by means ...
— The History of the Fabian Society • Edward R. Pease
... to pray for ourselves, so surely should we lay up a store of habits against the time when we may be unable to think or reason for ourselves! How often have lives been saved by the mere instinct of unquestioning ...
— Henrietta's Wish • Charlotte M. Yonge
... their own ends, trembled before their savage gods. Low, brutish, full of inconsistent wiles their faith might be, but such faith it was as an educated Roman could with difficulty comprehend. On the other hand, the minds of the women of Rome had not as yet swerved from unquestioning belief in the gods consulting and the gods apart, and the Torquati were most conservative among all the great houses. From childhood up—and in years she was scarcely more than a child—all these had been very ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne
... more of their country and less of their own pockets. The unquestioning courage of the simple Russian soldiers! Every one ready to die—and yet nothing to back them up. ...
— Trapped in 'Black Russia' - Letters June-November 1915 • Ruth Pierce
... taunt of all. Did not Elsie well know that Duncan was bound to her by the chains of a most unswerving, unquestioning loyalty? and that though he was, so to speak, ready to jump out of his skin with impatient anxiety, to forsake Elsie would never enter ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... the abstract, but what many are not prepared to admit in detail. It will be vaguely felt, that views which take so little account of present inconvenience and manifest danger are perilous and novel, though they may seem to spring from a more unquestioning faith, a more absolute confidence in truth, and a more perfect submission to the general laws of morality. There is no articulate theory, and no distinct view, but there is long habit, and there are strong inducements of another ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... were good old Dutch-Reformed Christians, unquestioning believers in the Bible in general, and the Ten Commandments in particular,—persons whose moral constitutions had been nourished on the great stocky beefsteaks and sirloins of plain old truths which go to form English and Dutch nature. Theirs was a style of character which rendered them ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... suffer that the vitality of the old creed is manifested in the person of its professors. Under this aspect we behold it moulding men, of all nations, countries, and tongues, whose virtues have challenged and should command on its behalf the unquestioning faith and adhesion of every rational observer. "Evidences of Christianity," "Controversies," "Exegetical Commentaries," have all proved [222] more or less futile—as perhaps they ought—with the Science and Modern Criticism which perverts religion into a matter of dialectics. But there ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas
... he afterward described to himself as an unquestioning obedience to a first impulse, at the centre of which was an instantaneous fear of discovery. Before Bauer had taken another step nearer him he had turned, switched off the power from the lamp, and snatched up ...
— The High Calling • Charles M. Sheldon
... approbation of her intellect. Though few first wives in Utah had learned to look concubinage in the face so late in life as this emphatic and vigorous-natured woman, I certainly met none whose partisanship of polygamy was so unquestioning and eloquent. She was one of the strangest psychological problems I ever met. Indeed, I am half inclined to think that she embraced Mormonism earlier than her husband, and, by taking the initiative, secured ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... realize that by advocating and securing suffrage for women it may bind to itself for many years to come, through a sense of gratitude and loyalty, a large number of women voters, just as the Republican party since the emancipation of the negro has had without effort the unquestioning loyalty of thousands of negro voters; although the women would never vote so solidly as do the negroes, because they would represent a much ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... singular opinion of Aristotle, which supposed the enormous mass of ®gos Potamos to have been raised by a hurricane. That rrogant spirit of incredulity, which rejects facts without attempting to investigate them, is in some cases almost more injurious than an unquestioning credulity. Both are alike detrimental to the force of investigation. Notwithstanding that for more than two thousand years the annals of different nations had recorded falls of meteoric stones, many of which had been attested beyond all doubt by the ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt
... to the overbearing suasion of my Lady Castlemaine—he returned to the attack, and sent the Chancellor his orders in a letter demanding unquestioning obedience. ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini
... enlightened selfishness which prompted her to take excellent care of her affairs. As long as old Mr. Farnham lived, she took his advice implicitly in regard to her investments, and after his death she transferred the same unquestioning confidence to his grandson and heir, although he was much younger than herself and comparatively inexperienced in money matters. It seemed to her only natural that some of the Farnham wisdom should have descended with the Farnham millions. There was a grain of good sense in this reasoning, ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay
... and the summer heat, that she should never know rough work nor sad days, but that she should be as tenderly protected, as daintily cared for, as any lady of them all,—how often he said all these things, we need not enumerate; nor need we say with what unquestioning trust, and deafness to all the suggestions of probability, Jenny believed. Does not love, in fact, always believe what it hopes? Who would do away with the blessed insanity that clothes the marriage day with such enchantment? Who would dare to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... the happy moments he had alone with Carroll, he arrived at a more intimate plane of conversation with her. He came to an understanding of her unquestioning acceptance of Mrs. Bishop's attitude. Carroll truly believed that none but herself could perform for her mother the various petty offices that lady demanded from her next of kin, and that her practical slavery ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White
... of competitive designs," said the visitor, "this great fretwork of cross purposes, is a decided change from the quiet order of our rural life. Hmm! There everything is under the administration of one undisputed will, and is executed by the unquestioning obedience of our happy and contented slave peasantry. I prefer the country. But I thought this was just the change that would arouse and electrify an invalid who has ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... a prayer with God," quoted Deleah, unquestioning in her child's heart the literal truth ...
— Mrs. Day's Daughters • Mary E. Mann
... up to Alec as a great strong creature. Her faith in him had been unquestioning and unbounded. Even his wrong-doings had not impressed her with any sense of his weakness. But now, rejected and disgraced, his mother dissatisfied, his friend disappointed, and himself foiled in the battle of life, he had fallen upon evil days, and all ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... lapsed again into her love for the youth. Will Brangwen had fixed his marriage for the Saturday before Christmas. And he waited for her, in his bright, unquestioning fashion, until then. He wanted her, she was his, he suspended his being till the day should come. The wedding day, December the twenty-third, had come into being for him as an absolute thing. He ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... into some confusion by Galliard's unquestioning generosity, "I am indebted to you. Rat me, sir, I am indeed. You shall have my note of hand on the instant. How much ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... ordinary circumstances, when palaeographers like Sir Frederic Madden, Sir Francis Palgrave, and Mr. Duffus Hardy, tell us that a manuscript, professing to be ancient and original, is a modern fabrication, we submit at once. A judgment pronounced by such experts commands the unquestioning deference of laymen; unless, indeed, the doctors differ; and then the humblest and most ignorant of us all must endeavor to decide between them. And when a court, under extraordinary circumstances,—and those of the present case are very extraordinary,— not only pronounces ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... army is dangerous to liberty, because it is commanded by the executive, to whom it yields unquestioning obedience. Armies obey commands, while citizens comply with laws. And thus a large standing army creates a caste, out of sympathy with the lives of citizens. More than one republic has been overthrown by a successful ...
— Studies in Civics • James T. McCleary
... their relationship though he was fairly convinced that Everard had not taken Bernard into his confidence. This fact held a subtle solace for him, for it meant that Bernard, who was as open as the day, was content to be in the dark, and satisfied that it held nothing of an evil nature. This unquestioning faith on Bernard's part was Tommy's one ray of light. He knew instinctively that Bernard was not a man to compromise with evil. He carried his banner that all might see. He was not ashamed to confess his Master before all men, and Tommy ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... almost convince others of her own exemption from them. Her mental bearing disproved the evidence of the senses, and she could have committed a crime with such consummate self-poise and grace as to have held a crowd in abeyance with utter distrust of their own eyes before such unquestioning confidence in the sovereignty of the situation. Cynthia Lennox had always had her own way except in one respect, and that experience had come ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... they were clear of the village. Radmore thought he knew every inch of the way, for he and Betty had once cycled together all over the countryside. He checked a sigh as he thought of those days—how happy he had been, with that simple, unquestioning happiness which belongs only to extreme youth. He wondered if Betty ever remembered those far-off days. They had come very near, the one to the other, last evening, and yet, from his point of view, theirs was an unsatisfactory kind of friendship. It was as if she was always holding something ...
— What Timmy Did • Marie Adelaide Belloc Lowndes
... and terror come from God, without reference to the sensitiveness of the soul and body on which they fall, can we possibly love the Power which behaves so? What child could love a father who might at any time strike him? I cannot believe that God wants an unquestioning and fatuous trust, and still less the sort of deference we pay to one who may do us a mischief if we do not cringe before him. All that is utterly unworthy ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... comfort and ease which is the natural element of doubt and discussion. Science did not exist. The little learning of the time was exclusively in the hands of the priesthood. If from time to time an intelligent spirit struggled against the chain of unquestioning bigotry that bound him, he was rigorously silenced by prompt and bloody punishment. There seemed to be no need of discussion, no need of inculcation of doctrine. The serious work of the time was the war with the infidel. The clergy managed everything. The ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... once with the unquestioning readiness of one used to his mistress' whims. For several minutes she remained silent. She had the air of one drinking in with almost passionate eagerness the sedative effect of the stillness, the soft spring air, the musical country sounds, the ripple of the breeze in the trees, the humming ...
— The Cinema Murder • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... visitors, or because they had persuaded Cheops of the truth of some important doctrine, shows that they must have gained great influence over his mind. Rather we may say that he must have been so convinced of their knowledge and power as to have accepted with unquestioning confidence all that they told him respecting the particular subject over which they seemed to ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... credit of the perspicacity of the memorialists that they discern the real nature of the Controverted Question of the age. They are awake to the unquestionable fact that, if Scripture has been discovered "not to be worthy of unquestioning belief," faith "in the supernatural itself" is, so far, undermined. And I may congratulate myself upon such weighty confirmation of an opinion in which I have had the fortune to anticipate them. But whether it is more to the credit of the courage, than to the intelligence, ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... a patriot in the Revolution, still he was brought up under the shadow of a throne, and a man cannot ravel out the stitches in which early days have knit him. His theology was, in fact, the turning to an invisible Sovereign of that spirit of loyalty and unquestioning subjugation which is one of the noblest capabilities of our nature. And as a gallant soldier renounces life and personal aims in the cause of his king and country, and holds himself ready to be drafted for a forlorn hope, to be shot down, or help make a bridge ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... cherish any ill-feelings towards the Brahmanas. Whatever instructions they impart I accept with unquestioning reverence. When the Brahmanas are engaged in interpreting the scriptures, I listen to them with great happiness. Having heard their interpretations I never disregard them. Nor do I ever offend against the ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... of accepting what circumstances offered him. He was not a suspicious person; although, in fear of being fooled by his fancy, he cultivated what he often spoke of to a friend as "morose common-sense," deeming it a desirable alloy. There was even, in many relations, an unquestioning trust on his part; for ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... tender wax which a man always moulds into anything he likes. . . . My God! for the sake of some trumpery masculine enthusiasm she will cut off her hair, abandon her family, die among strangers! . . . among the ideas for which she has sacrificed herself there is not a single feminine one. . . . An unquestioning, devoted slave! I have not measured skulls, but I say this from hard, bitter experience: the proudest, most independent women, if I have succeeded in communicating to them my enthusiasm, have followed me without criticism, ...
— The Chorus Girl and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... But—thanks—I'd rather not," he bluntly persisted, hating himself for the churlish response, and all the time wanting to go—certain to have gone if he had given himself time to think. Soldiers and sailors, with their habit of unquestioning obedience to authority, are almost always "good" churchmen, and, as she had pointed out, this offer of Christian privileges did not come to him every year. He had not anticipated it on this occasion, knowing Redford to be situated at least ten ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... orthodox. It grieved me much, also, to give pain to my old Brittany masters, who retained such kindly feelings towards me. The critical question, as it represented itself to my mind, would have seemed absolutely unintelligible to them, so plain and unquestioning was their faith. I went back to Paris therefore without letting them know anything more than that I was likely to travel, and that my ecclesiastical studies ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... ceremonies and adopted symbols in order to express what they came to believe. All their rites, their vocations, their pleasures were born, practiced and enjoyed under the arching skies, and were permeated, as by a vital spirit, with an unquestioning ...
— Indian Games and Dances with Native Songs • Alice C. Fletcher
... plan was so to manage as to have Maggie received in the Sherwood household as a guest, to have her receive the frank, unquestioning hospitality (and perhaps friendship) of such a gracious, highly placed, unpretentious woman as Miss Sherwood, so distinctly a native of, and not an immigrant to, the great world. To be received as a friend by those against whom she plotted, to have ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... growing place and flinging it out on the dust-heap to die. She was so utterly unsuspicious and unaware of evil, and she had placed him on so high a pedestal of honour, trusting him with such perfect and unquestioning faith, that for very manhood's sake he could not bring himself to tear the veil from her eyes. Moreover he really loved her in a curious, haphazard way of love, —more than he had ever loved any one of her sex,—and, ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... Queen. Her expression and attitude are always calm and commanding. She never calls for sympathy by hysterical appeals to our feelings; she does not even altogether command, but rather accepts the voluntary, unquestioning, unhesitating, instinctive faith, love, and devotion of mankind. She will accept ours, and we have not the heart to refuse it; we have not even the right, for we are ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... digression, with your permission, let me state briefly and frankly, once for all, that the only really religious, unquestioning and absolutely devout Christians I ever met in America are the Indians. I know of no other people so faithful and so blindly true to their belief, outside of the peasantry of Italy. Be their beautiful faith ...
— Shadows of Shasta • Joaquin Miller
... politically hostile as it had hitherto shown itself to the expansion of slavery, the new doctrines were received with an outburst of anger which seems to have been primarily a revulsion against their unheard of individualism. If nothing, which had been the object of unquestioning popular reverence, from the Constitution down or up to the church organizations, was to be sacred against the criticism of the Garrisonians, it was certain that the innovators must submit for a time to a general proscription. Thus the Garrisonians ...
— American Eloquence, Volume II. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... freely and allowed me to catch him in my hand without resistance, which is very uncommon. (Perhaps I ought to say that I do not try to tame my birds.) He displayed a child-like, confiding disposition, both in his unreasoning terror at first, and his unquestioning faith ...
— In Nesting Time • Olive Thorne Miller
... Puzzled but unquestioning, the admiral went to the visiphone and dialed the zoo. "Admiral Hawarden, Curator. I believe the Prime Minister's toogan was just delivered to you. There was a mistake. Please send it back ... never mind, sir, what the 'why' is, just return ...
— Man of Many Minds • E. Everett Evans
... considerations explain the remarkable absence from this play of any criticism of life or any definite moral judgment. I know that some commentators have found in it a "humble and unquestioning piety," but I cannot help suspecting that what they saw was only a reflection from their own pious and unquestioning minds. Man is indeed shown as a "plaything of Gods," but of Gods strangely and incomprehensibly malignant, ...
— Oedipus King of Thebes - Translated into English Rhyming Verse with Explanatory Notes • Sophocles
... was gone from her blue eyes. All this time, I being as close to her side as might be, in case of any rudeness of the men, though that was not likely, they being a picked crew of Suffolkshire men, and having as yet not tasted more wine than would make them unquestioning of strange happenings, and render them readily acquiescent to all counter currents ...
— The Heart's Highway - A Romance of Virginia in the Seventeeth Century • Mary E. Wilkins
... of the British—too long subject to the ravages of civil and foreign war, to have preserved many of those minor records which concern only the renown of individuals, and are unnecessary to the comprehension of great events; and the vague tributes of unquestioning tradition are not adequate authorities for the biographer, whose laws are perhaps even more strict than those which govern the historian. Numerous volumes, some private manuscripts, and much unpublished correspondence, to which ...
— The Life of Francis Marion • William Gilmore Simms
... the house again spoke with the naivete of unquestioning bias. "No, Ephraim; for your mother would be the last to interfere with any for doing righteousness ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... unreasoning, unquestioning love of a man for a woman or a woman for a man, just as they are, for themselves only; "because it was you and me," as Montaigne says. Not a respect for good qualities, a mere admiration for beauty, a perception of ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... all? There must be some significance, some inner truth veiled in mystery, behind even the casually accepted and never probed religion to which she had been born and in which she had found poor refuge. For, like many of her thoughtless, unquestioning class, she had looked at Christ through stained-glass windows, and now the windows were darkened.... For the first time in her life, her soul groped intensely towards eternal verities. The fire burned low and she shivered. She became again ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... regarding temporal things, this may be taken as a motto for the child of God amid all the changing vicissitudes of his changing history. How it should lull all misgivings; silence all murmurings; lead to lowly, unquestioning submissiveness—"My Heavenly Father knoweth that I have ...
— The Words of Jesus • John R. Macduff
... henceforward were watched with as much circumstance as his own. At the same time his devotion to the woman he loved increased from day to day. The perils she was called upon to meet were incurred through her unquestioning love of him. ...
— The Tragedies of the Medici • Edgcumbe Staley
... in ascertaining exactly what was done by the expedition commanded by Captain Nicolas Baudin on the coasts which were labelled Terre Napoleon. On scrutinising the facts somewhat narrowly, he was surprised to find that opinions accepted with unquestioning faith began to crumble away for lack ...
— Terre Napoleon - A history of French explorations and projects in Australia • Ernest Scott
... of Indiana and Senator Platt of Connecticut, accepting the verdict of history as the proof of manifest destiny, called for unquestioning support of the administration in its final step. "Every expansion of our territory," said the latter, "has been in accordance with the irresistible law of growth. We could no more resist the successive expansions by which we have grown to be the strongest nation on earth than a tree ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... a noble man should have no higher ideal of the love of a high-souled, heroic woman! Oh that men should teach women that they owe no higher duties, and are capable of no higher tenderness, than this loving, unquestioning animal fidelity! The dog is ever-loving, ever-forgiving, because God has given him no high range of moral faculties, no sense of justice, no consequent ...
— Lady Byron Vindicated • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... blessedness cannot be reached by mere self-discipline; the prayers, the meditations, the good works of the isolated and uninstructed individual, can only serve to condone a state of irremediable ignorance. The avenue to knowledge of Him lies through faith; and faith means the unquestioning acceptance of the twofold revelation of Himself which He has given in the Scriptures and in the tradition of the Church. The two revelations are in effect reduced to one by the statement that only the Church is ...
— Medieval Europe • H. W. C. Davis
... were regarding Mrs. Clinton the others did not ask. Theirs was unquestioning loyalty, and they were ready to follow him now with the same blind and fateful devotion that had brought them with him on board the Breckenbridge ...
— Rodman The Boatsteerer And Other Stories - 1898 • Louis Becke
... the American attitude of women toward men, in the more luxurious circles, is often, I admit, that of a spoiled child toward a gift-bringing uncle, and she permits him to worship her along the lines of a restricted rubric; but in Germany the subordination, the unquestioning and unthinking adulation, the blind acceptance of inferiority have not only softened the men but robbed the women of even sufficient independence to make them the helpmates that they try to be. There have been women of ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... his chair. The plotting waters were deepening swiftly, much too swiftly for him. Loyalty to his superior officer, the unquestioning loyalty that disregards motives entirely and does not look too closely at methods, was his fetish. But these men were not merely loyal to Mr. North. They were criminals—he stuck at the word, but there was no other—fighting ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... around for some warrior who had invincible troops at his command for their protection. Thus Rhodolph of Hapsburg was chosen chief of the mountaineers of Uri, Schweitz and Underwalden; and all their trained bands were ready, when his bugle note echoed through their defiles, to follow him unquestioning, and to do his bidding. The citizens of Zurich chose Rhodolph of Hapsburg as their prefect or mayor; and whenever his banner was unfurled in their streets, all the troops of the ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott
... course, to make the interest complete, there is a woman in the affair, and Hawthorne has done few things more beautiful than the picture of the unequal complicity of guilt between his immature and dimly-puzzled hero, with his clinging, unquestioning, unexacting devotion, and the dark, powerful, more widely-seeing feminine nature of Miriam. Deeply touching is the representation of the manner in which these two essentially different persons—the woman intelligent, passionate, acquainted with life, and with a tragic element ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.
... obedience to that decision without quibbling and without question; that is the thing the nervous man and woman must learn in connection with the later conquest of their own nerves; and a foundation for such a mastery of one's unruly nerves is best laid early in life—by teaching the child prompt and unquestioning obedience to parental commands. At the same time, endeavor so to raise the child that it acquires the faculty of quickly and agreeably adapting itself to its environment, at the same time cheerfully recognizing ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler
... necessarily crush the weaker, the armed power supporting the directors must therefore triumph in the end, and the man who controlled that must become the master of the Directory and the ruler of the country. Moreover, a people can be free only when the first and unquestioning devotion of every citizen is not to a party, but to his country and its constitution, his party allegiance being entirely secondary. This was far from being the case in France: the nation was divided into irreconcilable camps, not of constitutional parties, but of ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... surely happen: You will hate each other afterward with that enlightened hatred which is seasoned with contempt; you will emerge with the contempt tinged with a pitying toleration, or you will be close, unquestioning friends to the last six feet of earth—and beyond. All these things will cabin fever do, and more. It has committed murder, many's the time. It has driven men crazy. It has warped and distorted character out of ...
— Cabin Fever • B. M. Bower
... spirit to protest against the use of the Society for political ends and against infractions of the moral code which they believe certain members to have committed. But this party unfortunately constitutes only a small minority; the rest are prepared to render blind and unquestioning obedience to the dictates of Mrs. Besant and Mr. Leadbeater. In this respect the Theosophical Society follows the usual plan of secret societies. For although not nominally a secret society it is one in effect, being composed of outer and inner circles and absolutely controlled by supreme directors. ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... and whatever communities developed free thought and divergent ideas were at a disadvantage when it came to action. Many such groups, ahead of their rivals in individual moral development, were wiped out by barbaric armies that gave unquestioning obedience to the tribal will and worked together like a machine. Up to a certain stage in human development individuality was an undesirable variation and was ruthlessly repressed, sometimes by the execution of the particular offenders, sometimes ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... from humanity below." This is all very well, and it would be churlish to say that it is not beautifully reflected in Wagner's drama; but it does not explain the need of the prohibition. A woman who loves must have unquestioning faith in her husband—that is all. But there are two ancient myths which show that the taboo was conceived as a necessary ingredient of the association of divine men with human women. Let both be recalled, for both have plainly gone ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... order was that of absolute, unquestioning, blind obedience. The member must obey his superior "like a corpse which can be turned this way or that, or a rod that follows every impulse, or a ball of wax that might be moulded in any form." The ideal was an old one; the famous perinde ac cadaver itself dates back to Francis of ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... unconsciously annoyed them by his unresponsiveness. In fact, being entirely unacquainted with the game as they were in the habit of playing it, he set down the strange attempts of Cleo's sisters to provoke him to banter as rather silly. He did not know that they had thrown off their first unquestioning acceptance of his impressiveness and were now subjecting him to sharp criticism. They had their own notion—and a very definite one it was—of what a perfect gentleman should be, and they were not disposed lightly to accept a substitute. What, however, struck him particularly ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... home through the cold night, comforted. He had done his best: the rest must be as God willed, he thought, in that innocent, unquestioning faith which had been taught him in the little gray chapel among the ...
— A Dog of Flanders • Louisa de la Rame)
... light-footed activity of cats, and respectfully and promptly obedient to an extent which left nothing to be desired. My "sub," a merry, light-hearted little fellow, named Ito, although more than a year my senior, displayed not an atom of jealousy, but carried out my every order with the same prompt, unquestioning alacrity as the men; he was keen as mustard, and his chief, indeed his only, recreation seemed to be the ...
— Under the Ensign of the Rising Sun - A Story of the Russo-Japanese War • Harry Collingwood
... trained with great tenderness and gentleness but her father had accustomed her to the most unquestioning obedience. He forbade her positively to ask him any useless questions or to insist upon knowing anything he did not wish to tell her. In this way, by unceasing care and watchfulness, he had almost succeeded in curing one of Rosalie's great faults, a ...
— Old French Fairy Tales • Comtesse de Segur
... a very sad woman, with an eager desire to recapture the lost religious faith of her happy, unquestioning childhood and a still more passionate desire to believe in that immortality which her cold agnostic creed rejected as illogical. It was pitiful, this strong-minded woman reaching out for the things that less-endowed women accept without ...
— Modern English Books of Power • George Hamlin Fitch
... the eyes may take on a thousand forms: exultant jubilation, a trustful happiness; infinite appeasement, or promises untold; an adoration supreme, or a complex oblation; tenderness ineffable, or heroic resolves; implicit faith; unquestioning confidence; abounding ...
— Hints for Lovers • Arnold Haultain
... without thinking anything in particular about them. The conception which her pure angelic spirit had formed of her relation to her aged and princely husband was that she ought to honour him as her supreme lord, and cling to him with all the unquestioning fidelity of a submissive handmaiden. He treated her kindly, nay tenderly; he pressed her to his ice-cold heart and called her his darling; he heaped up all the jewels he could find upon her; what else could she wish for from him, what other rights could she have upon him? In this way, therefore, ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... train our children for submission, but for judgment and discernment. We must, therefore, respect the child's individuality. We are, however, not obliged to choose between blind, unquestioning obedience and the undignified situations which arise from habitual disobedience. Obedience to persons as a settled habit is bad. The ability to obey promptly and intelligently when the commander's authority is recognized,—to respond to suggestion and guidance,—is desirable. ...
— Your Child: Today and Tomorrow • Sidonie Matzner Gruenberg |
