"Sceptical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... many as seven thousand captives, supplied their immediate wants with the utmost tenderness, and sent them to Varahran, who can scarcely have failed to be impressed by an act so unusual in ancient times. Our sceptical historian remarks, with more apparent sincerity than usual, that this act was calculated "to inform, the Persian king of the true spirit of the religion which he persecuted," and that the name of the doer might well "have dignified the saintly calendar." These remarks are just; and it ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 7. (of 7): The Sassanian or New Persian Empire • George Rawlinson
... nothing more to say, so Dan Treu turned on his heel and walked away, angry, sceptical—without ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart
... was that of a profoundly sceptical instinct, of practical cautious incredulity. Bagehot's was the conservatism of middle-class English thought and experience. Tocqueville's was that of wide observation and bitter disappointment. Mill was a ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... after all other efforts, over the telephone a strange voice offered to deliver the murderer, Rumson was sceptical. He motioned the girl to switch ...
— Somewhere in France • Richard Harding Davis
... I may speak quite frankly, I do very much respect your own judgment and your convictions. It seems to me that you have a very sceptical turn of mind, which has acted as a solvent upon a whole host of stupid and conventional beliefs. I don't think you take things for granted, and it always seems to me that you have got rid of a great many foolish traditions ...
— Watersprings • Arthur Christopher Benson
... miracles are past: and we have our philosophical persons to make modern and familiar things, supernatural and causeless.' The comma ought to have been placed after 'familiar,' the sense being this—and we have amongst us sceptical and irreligious people to represent as trivial and of daily occurrence things which in reality are supernatural and causeless (that is, not lying amongst the succession of physical causes and effects, but sent as miracles by the immediate ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... by me; they went to Stockholm of their own initiative and on their own responsibility, but it is none the less true that I could have refused them their passes if I had shared the views of the Entente Governments and of numerous gentlemen in our own country. Certainly, I was at the time very sceptical as to the outcome, as I already saw that the Entente would refuse passes to their Socialists, and consequently there could be nothing but a "rump" parliament in the end. But despite all the reproaches which I had to bear, and the argument that the peace-bringing Socialists would ...
— In the World War • Count Ottokar Czernin
... "I put more of the substance on the flagging than I need to have done. A few drops would have answered quite as well, but I wanted to make sure. You were very sceptical, you know." ...
— The Face And The Mask • Robert Barr
... unquestioningly, just as he had believed in the history or the science that had been taught him. But in this society he met young men—and older men too, for several of the Dons were members—who were rationalists, materialists, and definitely sceptical. It dawned on his mind for the first time that, while all other sciences were of a deductive kind, endeavouring to approach principles from the observation and classification of phenomena, from the scrutiny of evidence, that theology was a science ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... men's dinner party, and they were sitting over their cigars and brandy and discussing magnetism. Donato's tricks and Charcot's experiments. Presently, the sceptical, easy-going men, who cared nothing for religion of any sort, began telling stories of strange occurrences, incredible things which, nevertheless, had really occurred, so they said, falling back into superstitious beliefs, clinging ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... however, down to the deistical movement which Rousseau found in progress at Geneva in 1754,[338] was distinctly the outcome in a more or less marked way of a rationalising and philosophic spirit, and not of the religious spirit. The sceptical side of it with reference to revealed religion, predominated over the positive side of it with reference to natural religion. The wild pantheism of which there were one or two extraordinary outbursts during ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... unfortunate in our weather during our stay at St. Louis, and I had no opportunity of seeing the beauties of the neighbourhood, which we hear much extolled, but respecting which we are rather sceptical. The only drive we took, was to a new park being made outside the town, called Lafayette Park, which gave us anything but a pleasant impression of the entourage of St. Louis; we must admit, however, that a very short distance by railway brought us into a very pretty country, ...
— First Impressions of the New World - On Two Travellers from the Old in the Autumn of 1858 • Isabella Strange Trotter
... crossed the equator on the forenoon of the 15th, in longitude 19 degrees 45 minutes West, where we endeavoured to obtain soundings with 2000 fathoms of line, which parted at 1600 fathoms. Respecting deep-sea soundings, there are some sceptical persons who, in consequence of the bottom not being brought up from the great depths reported to have been found, are inclined to doubt that soundings were ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes
... indeed, Clarke and M'Arthur, say, that at this time the treatment he received disgusted him with his profession, and that he had even determined never to set his foot again on board a king's ship, but resign his commission at once. But Sir Harris Nicolas very justly is sceptical as to the truth of this anecdote, from the fact, that there is no allusion to any intention of the kind in his correspondence. And from what we see of his disposition in all his letters, we feel ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... or such monotony of scenery or occupation. Although I am leaving this country, probably for good, I would not wish it to be thought that I have no faith in it, for the late developments and marvellous returns from the goldfields should convert the most sceptical. Nor have the other sources of wealth to the Colony failed to impress their importance on me. . . Every one is glad to return to his home, and I am no exception; but however happy I am at the prospect of again seeing my native land, yet I cannot say goodbye ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie
... wild little torch with a quick movement, as if of shame. "Let me carry your lantern," he said; "it is heavy." He recovered with a spring; and in a moment, from the awe-stricken spectator he had been, became himself, sceptical and cynical. "I should like to ask you a question," he said. "Do you believe in Purgatory, Doctor? It's not in the tenets of the Church, so far as ...
— The Open Door, and the Portrait. - Stories of the Seen and the Unseen. • Margaret O. (Wilson) Oliphant
... The Sceptical Philosophy of the Ancients has been no less misrepresented than the Epicurean. Pyrrho may perhaps have carried it to rather an irrational excess;—but we must not believe with Beattie all the absurdities imputed to this philosopher; and it appears to me that the ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... Government, Department of Justice, I had studied investigations into the relation of a low wage to the life of immorality. These had shown me that many factors in the home, in the training, in the mental condition, often contributed to the result. I had grown sceptical of the "plain" statement of a complex matter, and peculiarly hesitant in accepting accounts of outrage and cruelty. It was in this spirit that I crossed to Belgium. To this extent, I had ...
— Golden Lads • Arthur Gleason and Helen Hayes Gleason
... of the family, the society, the State; he thinks and acts more in a minute than a hundred writers can describe and explain in a year; he is a laughing, weeping, money-making, clothes-wearing, lying, reasoning, worshipping, amorous, credulous, sceptical, imitative, combative, gregarious, prehensile, two-legged animal. He does not cease to be all this and more, merely because he happens to be at one of his thousand tricks, and you catch him in the act. How do ...
— Milton • Sir Walter Alexander Raleigh
... abroad with O. G. Spence's heir! He had the scientific detachment to pull out his watch and furtively note the hour. Yes—it was exactly forty minutes since he had rung the Spence door-bell and handed his card to a gelid footman, who, openly sceptical of his claim to be received, had left him unceremoniously planted on the ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton
... a prudent little boy, with a sceptical look in his small countenance. "And where's the water?" he would have added if he ...
— Little Tora, The Swedish Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Mrs. Woods Baker
... assertion that four more moving bodies had to be added to the planetary system. They scoffed at the notion; they said the satellites may have been in the telescope, but that they were not in the sky. One sceptical philosopher is reported to have affirmed, that even if he saw the moons of Jupiter himself he would not believe in them, as their existence was contrary to ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... Browning, I want the spring according to the new 'style' (mine), and not the old one of you and the rest of the poets. To me unhappily, the snowdrop is much the same as the snow—it feels as cold underfoot—and I have grown sceptical about 'the voice of the turtle,' the east winds blow so loud. April is a Parthian with a dart, and May (at least the early part of it) a spy in the camp. That is my idea of what you call spring; mine, ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... merely by asking questions—unless he can answer the questions. Asking questions is already the fashionable and aristocratic sport which has brought most of us into the bankruptcy court. The note of our age is a note of interrogation. And the final point is so plain; no sceptical philosopher can ask any questions that may not equally be asked by a tired child on a hot afternoon. "Am I a boy?—Why am I a boy?—Why aren't I a chair?—What is a chair?" A child will sometimes ask questions ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... right to touch upon this well-known sceptical topic; but to insist much upon it is not a sign of good sense. The works of Herschel, Whewell, and Jevons should be consulted for the various methods of correcting observations, by repeating them, averaging them, verifying one experimental process by another, always refining the ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read
... confession! Well, there has been tea up there. I had some. If you hurry on after Yakovlitch, instead of wasting your time with such an unsatisfactory sceptical person as myself, you may find the ghost of it—the cold ghost of it—still lingering in the temple. But as to you being tired I can hardly believe it. We are not supposed to be. We mustn't, We can't. The other day I read in some paper or other an alarmist article ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... automatic mimicry which shows itself in greater persistence of customs. For customs adopted by each generation from the last without thought or inquiry, imply a tendency to imitate which overmasters critical and sceptical tendencies: so maintaining habits for which no reasons can be given. The decrease of this irrational mimicry, strongest in the lowest savage and feeblest in the highest of the civilized, should be studied along with the successively higher stages of social life, as being at once an aid ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... wife, reading aloud to her while she worked; now translating from some foreign poet, now rolling forth melodiously the exquisite cadences of Queen Mab. Student of philosophy as he was, he was deeply and steadily sceptical; and a very religious relative has told me that he often drove her from the room by his light playful mockery of the tenets of the Christian faith. His mother and sister were strict Roman Catholics, and near the end forced a priest into his room, but the priest ...
— Autobiographical Sketches • Annie Besant
... The sceptical insurrection of the eighteenth century made a terrific noise and frightened not a few worthy people out of their wits; but cool judges might have foreseen, at the outset, that the efforts of the later rebels were no more likely than those of the earlier, to furnish permanent resting-places ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... important Petersburg review, "Russkoe Bogatsvo;" a year later, other publications equally well known published, "Konovalov," "Malva," and "Anxiety." These works brought Gorky into the literary world, where he soon became one of the favorite writers. The critics, at first sceptical, soon joined their voices with the enthusiastic clamor ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky
... carrying great weight. Equally important is the evidence of Tatian. This remarkable Syrian wrote a harmony of the Gospels near A.D. 160. Allusions to this harmony, called the Diatessaron, were known to exist in several ancient writers, but until recently it was strenuously maintained by sceptical writers that there was not sufficient evidence to prove that the Diatessaron was composed of our present Gospels. It was suggested that it might have been drawn from other Gospels more or less resembling those which we now possess. This idea has now been dispelled. A great Syrian father, Ephraim, ...
— The Books of the New Testament • Leighton Pullan
... was too polite, it seemed, to be sceptical, and by his attitude expressed a readiness to be convinced as much from indifference as ...
— The Last Hope • Henry Seton Merriman
... sorry to say that yellow journalism is not only not unknown in Japan, but is apparently in a very flourishing condition there. I regret the fact all the more because the people of Japan are not yet sufficiently educated or enlightened to receive what they read in the newspaper in a sceptical spirit. That educational and enlightening process is only effected by a long course of newspaper reading. Even in this country we can remember the time when any statement was implicitly believed because it was "in the papers." ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery
... Oriental anecdotes written in corrupt Greek. The fact, when realised, has about it something stunning and hypnotic. The most convinced rationalist is in its presence suddenly stricken with a strange and ancient vision, sees the immense sceptical cosmogonies of this age as dreams going the way of a thousand forgotten heresies, and believes for a moment that the dark sayings handed down through eighteen centuries may, indeed, contain in themselves the revolutions of which we ...
— Twelve Types • G.K. Chesterton
... prophets?" said Leicester. "I thought thou wert sceptical in all such matters as thou couldst neither see, hear, smell, taste, or touch, and that thy belief was limited by ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... before the doctor imagined he did understand the boy; and indeed, sceptical as both his knowledge of himself and of the world had made him, he did so far understand him as to believe him as innocent of evil as the day he was born. His eyes could not shine so, his mouth could not have that childlike—the doctor called it ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... that Erasmus laid the egg, and Luther hatched a cockatrice. Erasmus resented deeply such an account of his work; but it was true after all. The sceptical philosophy is the most powerful of solvents, but it has no principle of organic life in it; and what of truth there was in Erasmus's teaching had to assume a far other form before it was available for the reinvigoration ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... even if he had been merely Yorick, Sterne would have had manifold opportunities of giving offence and causing scandal. But lie was not only a humorist with "a thousand little sceptical notions to defend," but he was a sentimentalist as well. Those two characteristics he was constantly mingling, or trying to mingle, since sentimentality and humour are in reality like oil and wine. He would exasperate his readers by throwing his wig in their faces at the moment when they were ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... while this prodigious moonshine is concocting?" demanded Zeus, who had become the most sceptical ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... just heard? Wilford replied that he was sure his lordship fully believed in the truth of what he had just stated; but, for his own part, he had so often found impossibilities of this nature yield to a little courage and determination, that he confessed he was somewhat sceptical. Now, it so happened that Foxington, soon after he bought the mare, had thought just as Wilford did, and determined that he would put the bridle on. Accordingly he attempted it, and the matter ended by his getting regularly ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... spiritual things. Material relief tests us too. If we give it believing that, in itself, it can carry any blessing to the poor, we are taking a grossly material view of human life. If, on the other hand, our knowledge of the mischief done by reckless giving makes us morbidly sceptical of all material assistance, we are losing a valuable tool; for relief at the right time, and given in the right way, may be made an incentive to renewed exertion, and a help to a ...
— Friendly Visiting among the Poor - A Handbook for Charity Workers • Mary Ellen Richmond
... outline what he intended to do when I could see from the commissioner's face that he was very sceptical ...
— Guy Garrick • Arthur B. Reeve
... prejudice, or a passion for freedom as an illusion. The cosmopolitan or international idea which such teachers as Cobden have tried to impress on our stubborn islanders, would have found in Macaulay not lukewarm or sceptical adherence, but point-blank opposition and denial. He believed as stoutly in the supremacy of Great Britain in the history of the good causes of Europe, as M. Thiers believes in the supremacy of France, or Mazzini believed in that of Italy. The thought of the prodigious industry, the inventiveness, ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Volume I (of 3) - Essay 4: Macaulay • John Morley
... expansive heraldries: at times the whole world almost seemed buried thus—made and re-made of the dead—its entire fabric of politics, of art, of custom, being essentially heraldic "achievements," dead men's mementoes such as those. You see he was a sceptical young man, and his kinsmen dead and gone had passed certainly, in his imaginations of them, into no other world, save, perhaps, into some stiffer, slower, sleepier, and more pompous phase of ceremony—the last degree of court etiquette—as they lay ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Pater
... the grass belt above. But what may be above this grass belt I know not yet, for our view ends at the top of the wall of the great S.E. crater. My men say there are devils and gold up beyond, but the German authorities do not support this view. Those Germans are so sceptical. This station is evidently on a ledge, for behind it the ground falls steeply, and you get an uninterrupted panoramic view of the Cameroon estuary and the great stretches of low swamp lands with the Mungo and the Bimbia rivers, and their many creeks ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... glaring without them in the summer months, for it has undoubtedly proved its claim to be the sunniest south coast resort; a claim at one time or other put forth by all. The most convincing proof to the sceptical stranger will be the miles of glass houses for the culture of the tomato with which the town is surrounded. Its chief attraction lies in the number of interesting places which can easily be reached in a short time and with little trouble. The Downs here are farther off than those at Brighton, but ...
— Seaward Sussex - The South Downs from End to End • Edric Holmes
... simply does what the green-grocer does when he arranges his apples and plums in his shop window. He may tell me a magnum bonum from a Victoria, or a Baldwin from a Newtown Pippin. But he does not help me to eat it. His information is useful, and for scientific horticulture essential. Should a sceptical pomologist deny that there was such a thing as a Baldwin, or mistake it for a Newtown Pippin, we should be glad to refer to him; but if we were hungry, and an orchard were handy, we should not trouble him. Truth in the Bible is an orchard rather than ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond
... busy with its own suggestions, is always liable. The night season, simply because it excludes the external, is prolific in such. The more of the marvellous any one may have experienced in the course of his history, the more sceptical ought he to become, for he is the more exposed to delusion. None have made more blunders in the course of their revelations than genuine seers. Was it any wonder that, as I sat at midnight beside the woman of a hundred years, who had voluntarily died for a time that she might discover ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... shadow of change among its members. This is what the New Testament, a code of philosophy fertile in new ideas, first introduced under the name of scandal; that is, any occasion of serious offence ministered to the weak or to the sceptical by differences irreconcilable in the acts or the opinions of those whom they are bound to regard as spiritual authorities. Now here in Scotland, is a feud past all arbitration: here is a schism no longer theoretic, neither beginning ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... account of their freeing of an imprisoned comrade and their grappling with problems arising out of such modern inventions as carbolic acid and tramways, we need not feel surprised if an observer accustomed to scrutinise the animal world so closely feels sceptical on the subject of "instinct" viewed as a mysterious entity antithetically opposed to "reason" and supposed to act as its substitute in the ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt
... what I am doing. I suppose I am naturally sceptical; but I want to put aside all that stands on insecure evidence, and all the sham terminology that comes from a muddled delight in the supernatural. I want to give up and clear away all that is not certain—material ...
— Watersprings • Arthur Christopher Benson
... who has witnessed such scenes all the years of his childhood and youth, can deny that among the disciples of Christ are to be reckoned especially the negro race; who bear His blessed cross in our day, amid the jeers of a sceptical world, just as in His own day upon earth the negro Simon of Cyrene bore to the Mount of Calvary the cross on which ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... are hardly any good and distinctive appreciations in print of Borrow's works. While other great names in the great literature of the Victorian Period have been praised by a hundred pens, there has scarcely been any notable and worthy praise of Borrow, and if I were in an audience that was at all sceptical as to Borrow's supreme merits, which happily I am not; if I were among those who declared that they could see but small merit in Borrow themselves, but were prepared to accept him if only I could bring good authority that he was a very great writer, I should be ...
— Immortal Memories • Clement Shorter
... impressed them badly.[80] It is in the highest degree improbable that they attached any importance to his few slips. He speaks of having a naturally weak memory which, so he declares, had grown worse while he was in prison,[81] and he was frankly sceptical as to the possibility of any man's recalling every incident in squabbles that happened years before.[82] As it happens, his memory seems to have been excellent. No doubt it failed him now and then; but seldom did it mislead him on any essential point.[83] It is conceivable ...
— Fray Luis de Leon - A Biographical Fragment • James Fitzmaurice-Kelly
... they executed their high commission. Depending alone on God, and inspired by his grace, they labored on, amid all the doubts and sneers of others, until their holy lives and correct deportment challenged the approbation of the most sceptical,—until God honored their work by great success,—until men, hardened ...
— Daughters of the Cross: or Woman's Mission • Daniel C. Eddy
... the church. It is filled, and even the sceptical De Breze is impressed and awed by the sight. An intense fervour pervades the congregation. The majority, it is true, are women, many of them in deep mourning, and many of their faces mourning deeper than the dress. Everywhere may be seen gushing tears, ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... "As you know, I am sceptical by nature, and want all evidence carefully sifted. I daresay I am too critical, and that is a fault. But fancy getting in touch with a friend of Dante's! What would one not give? Tell me: what is this Princess like? Is she the sort of person one ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... 1. The most sceptical criticism is obliged to respect the truth of this extraordinary fact, and the integrity of this celebrated passage of Tacitus. The former is confirmed by the diligent and accurate Suetonius, who mentions the punishment which Nero inflicted on the ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... certainly not a great teacher, but he has the power to ask awkward questions so characteristic of Andreev, Artsybashev, and indeed of all Russian novelists. We cannot answer him with a shrug of the shoulders or a sceptical smile. He shakes the foundations of our fancied security by boldly questioning what we had come to regard as axioms. As the late M. de Vogue remarked, when little children sit on our knee and pelt us with questions that go to the roots of our philosophy, we get rid of ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... her. Mrs. Beecher thought that one volume would be enough just at first, but Mrs. Hunt Mortimer said that it was better to have a wide choice. Maude went home and told Frank in the evening. He was pleased, but rather sceptical. ...
— A Duet • A. Conan Doyle
... he would say from the confidence he has in the immutable love and faithfulness of the Holy Being, who has wrought so great a work in him. And let philosophers cavil and doubt, if they must; but this man's example is a refutation in fact of a thousand of their sceptical theories. He is a new man, and the change was effected chiefly before discipline, or example, had time to work it. He is an honest man, and soberly asserts that to his certain knowledge he did not perform the work himself. But where is the example to be found of such ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various
... an extravagant fancy, but it is a sentiment which strikes home to my very soul: though sceptical in some points of our current belief, yet, I think, I have every evidence for the reality of a life beyond the stinted bourne of our present existence; if so, then, how should I, in the presence of that tremendous ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... neglected, I interpreted so far as to say that perhaps at that moment the flames were catching hold of our worthy brother and inside passenger, Ucalegon. The coachman made no answer,—which is my own way when a stranger addresses me either in Syriac or in Coptic; but by his faint sceptical smile he seemed to insinuate that he knew better,—for that Ucalegon, as it happened, was not in the way-bill, and therefore could not have ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... qualities to their favourite animals; the lion of the Old World thus came to be regarded as brave and I magnanimous above all beasts of the field—the Bayard of the four-footed kind, a reputation which these prosaic and sceptical times have not suffered it to keep. Precisely the contrary has happened with the puma of literature; for, although to those personally acquainted with the habits of this lesser lion of the New World it is known to possess a marvellous courage and daring, ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... "And this from our sceptical disbeliever, boys!" struck in Tony West, raising his hands in mock horror. "Nigel, m'lad, you've made an early conversion. The good doctor has a sneaking belief in the story. How now, son? What's your ...
— The Riddle of the Frozen Flame • Mary E. Hanshew
... received articles of the Christian Creed. The work attracted some share of public attention. A poetical effusion in verse was addressed to Blair in reply by a minister of the Protestant Church; and an Anabaptist minister also entered the lists with a pamphlet nearly as sceptical as the one he professed ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... against the world Miss Miniver assembled a small but energetic minority, the Children of Light—people she described as "being in the van," or "altogether in the van," about whom Ann Veronica's mind was disposed to be more sceptical. ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... locality as to remember where he was, and the whole furniture of the Green Chamber was depicted to his slumbering eye. And here, once more, let me protest, that if there should be so much old-fashioned faith left among this shrewd and sceptical generation, as to suppose that what follows was an impression conveyed rather by the eye than by the imagination, I do not impugn their doctrine. He was, then, or imagined himself, broad awake in the Green Chamber, gazing upon the ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... System or Analysis of Ancient Mythology (1774-76), Observations on the Plain of Troy (1795), and Dissertation concerning the Wars of Troy (1796). In the last two he endeavoured to show that the existence of Troy and the Greek expedition were fabulous. Though so sceptical on these points he was an implicit believer in the authenticity of the Rowley authorship of Chatterton's fabrications. He also wrote ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... without some effort of his own, to read the paper which follows and Dr. Butts's reflections upon it. If he has no curiosity in the direction of these chapters, he can afford to leave them to such as relish a slight flavor of science. But if he does so leave them he will very probably remain sceptical as to the truth of the story to which they are meant to furnish ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... was pleased to call him; but the old body herself came, and entreated of papa not to try and entice him to accompany us; for it seems that papa's cool and determined manner had made a great impression on Griffy, who, perhaps, got more sceptical on these matters, on account of it. Mrs. Davis was so importunate on the subject, that she obtained the desired assurance, viz., that Griffeth Davis should not be directly or indirectly tempted to encounter the ghost or ghosts, as the case ...
— A Book For The Young • Sarah French
... from behind a hedge in our own day, and, alas! in some parts of our own land. As in the highest good, so in the deepest evil, there are diversities of operation by the same spirit. When we take into account the changes of fashion which occur both in clothing and in crime, we have no reason to be sceptical as to the ancient fact, and no difficulty in obtaining a ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... been speaking of the intellectual region, and I would sum it up by saying that I think that the duty of every thoughtful person, who desires to avoid egotism in the intellectual region, is to cultivate what may be called the scientific, or even the sceptical spirit, to weigh evidence, and not to form conclusions without evidence. Thus one avoids the dangers of egotism best, because egotism is the frame of mind of the man who says credo quia credo. Whereas the aim of the philosopher should be to take nothing for ...
— From a College Window • Arthur Christopher Benson
... philosopher, was born at Cnossus in Crete and taught at Alexandria, probably during the first century B.C. He was the leader of what is sometimes known as the third sceptical school and revived to a great extent the doctrine of Pyrrho and Timon. His chief work was the Pyrrhonian Principles addressed to Lucius Tubero. His philosophy consisted of four main parts, the reasons for scepticism and doubt, the attack on causality and truth, a physical theory and ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... perils of transgressing this ring. Whether the threatened danger was material or spiritual I never fully understood, but a great fear used to possess me. I had read in the Ramayana of the tribulations of Sita for having left the ring drawn by Lakshman, so it was not possible for me to be sceptical of its potency. ...
— My Reminiscences • Rabindranath Tagore
... a little sceptical, but put me to the proof. If you could manage to slip out unobserved, I would engage to disguise you in such a manner that no one ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... for his rival, and not sit down and examine his own tongue in the chimney Bass, or write his own prescription at his study-table? I throw out these queries for intelligent readers to answer, who know, at once, how credulous we are, and how sceptical, how soft and how obstinate, how firm for others and how diffident about ourselves: meanwhile, it is certain that our friend William Dobbin, who was personally of so complying a disposition that if his parents had pressed him much, it is probable he would have stepped down ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Nan, coldly sceptical, eyed de Spain. "And do you try to tell me"—she pointed to Sassoon's unbound hands—"that he is riding out of here, a free ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... channels, from above downwards and from below upwards: it is reached through the reason and through the imagination and senses. By the latter channel it often receives evil impressions, undoubtedly, but not unfrequently by the former also. Reason may be inconsiderate, vain, haughty, mutinous, unduly sceptical. The abuse is no justification for closing either channel. Now the channel of the senses and of the imagination is the wider, and in many cases affords the better passage of the two. The will that is hardly reached by reason, is approached and won by a pathetic sight, a cry of enthusiasm, ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... education. All of them are well educated; two or three of them are smart. The school, which has an average attendance of 550, is in a high state of efficiency; is, in fact, one of the best to the country. The sceptical can refer to Government reports if they wish for absolute proof. Still further on there is another school, set apart for the instruction of middle class boys, and in charge of three Xavierian brothers. About 90 boys attend it, and they are well disciplined. ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... frankly stated by Mr. Gardiner, was that nothing less than occupancy carried the right to territorial dominion; and it had been declared to him that the locality of the Mine was not occupied by Spaniards. He was sceptical of the existence of the Mine, and he was mistrustful of Ralegh's disposition to comply with the compact. The national eagerness, however, for the adventure, and the confidence of Ralegh's well-wishers, overpowered his reluctance. He was moved also by the venial hope of a vast influx of innocent ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... scientific fact. But when a theory has been raised to such a level of probability as this, it is, for all practical purposes, as good as a demonstration. Thus, in the particular instance before us, even if the sceptical demand for evidence, which from the nature of the case is clearly impossible, were granted, and if we could actually observe the transmutation of species, the fact would not exert any further influence on the progress of science than is ...
— The Scientific Evidences of Organic Evolution • George John Romanes
... leavings from the feast",—he writes to Cassius. He would have had their daggers turned on Antony, at all events, as well as on Caesar. He wishes that "the gods may damn Caesar after he is dead;" professing on this occasion a belief in a future retribution, on which at other times he was sceptical. It is but right to remember all this, when the popular tide turned, and he himself came to be denounced to political vengeance. The levity with which he continually speaks of the assassination of Caesar—a man who had never treated him, at any rate, with anything but a noble ...
— Cicero - Ancient Classics for English Readers • Rev. W. Lucas Collins
... solitudes of the kitchen level were awfully dark, and this sceptical kitchen-wench was the only person now up and about the house. She hummed tunes to herself, for a time; and then stopped and listened; and then resumed her work again. At last, she was destined to be more terrified than ...
— Green Tea; Mr. Justice Harbottle • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... street of Blakeney. Ten minutes later, when the car followed, a mob of men so completely blocked the water-front that Ford was forced to stop. His head-lights illuminated hundreds of faces, anxious, sceptical, eager. A gentleman with a white mustache and a look of a retired army officer pushed his way toward Ford, the crowd making room for him, and ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... brought together, and many ingenious commentaries on them. But there are great chasms in his facts, and consequently in his reasoning. These he fills up by suppositions, which may be as reasonably denied as granted. A sceptical reader therefore, like myself, is left in the lurch. I acknowledge, however, he makes more use of fact, than any other writer on a theory of the earth. But I give one answer to all these theorists. That is as follows. They all suppose the earth a created existence. ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson
... bore through it. The ship, however, was never altogether arrested, though often much retarded. I recollect, while thus surrounded, filling a bucket with water from a pool on the ice, to see whether it was fresh or not, as I had been rather sceptical upon this point. It was excellent, and might almost compete with the water from the famous spring of Crawley. In a few days we got out of the ice altogether; and in this, as the ships are frequently detained for weeks in the straits, we ...
— Hudson Bay • R.M. Ballantyne
... transformation is inevitable. When it shall take place, when the struggle shall burst forth at twenty places at once, when the old combat between fact and right is decided, the peoples will remember that England had stood by, an inert, immovable, sceptical witness of their sufferings and efforts.... England will find herself some day a third-rate power, and to this she is being brought by a want of foresight in her statesmen. The nation must rouse herself and shake off the torpor ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,
... surely we're not to class our dear medical men as poisoners and murderers on that account. It's just the same with any abnormal or extraordinary facts that set up a new theory for investigation. Impostors are sure to creep in, and the lazy and the indifferent and the sceptical call their exposure 'results.' Depend on it we don't half investigate subjects now-a-days, and we suffer for it by giving place and opportunity for the development of a certain class of beings who prey ...
— The Mystery of a Turkish Bath • E.M. Gollan (AKA Rita)
... was among "the loudest bagpipes of the squeaking train." Even amongst the really earnest Puritans prosperity disclosed a pride, a worldliness, a selfish hardness which had been hidden in the hour of persecution. What was yet more significant was the irreligious and sceptical temper of the younger generation which had grown up amidst the storms of the Civil War. The children even of the leading Puritans stood aloof from Puritanism. The eldest of Cromwell's sons made small pretensions to religion. ...
— History of the English People, Volume VI (of 8) - Puritan England, 1642-1660; The Revolution, 1660-1683 • John Richard Green
... suggestion for some new mood of thought and feeling which he can realise with equal, or perhaps greater, distinction of form, and, through the use of a fresh medium of expression, make differently beautiful and more perfect. Well, you seemed to be a little sceptical about the theory. ...
— Intentions • Oscar Wilde
... are right, but sixty-nine or ninety-nine, I am inclined to be a little sceptical about that record myself; there is one thing in its favor, however, and that is, that he made it an even nine hundred and ninety-nine, and not one thousand. Of course, you know there are plenty of people living ...
— Montezuma's Castle and Other Weird Tales • Charles B. Cory
... pleasure could be apart from yours. The child is so like Robert that I can believe in the other likeness, and may the inner nature indeed, as you say, be after that pure image! He is so fat and rosy and strong that almost I am sceptical of his being my child. I suppose he is, after all. May God bless you, both of you. I am ashamed to send all these letters, but Robert makes me. He is better, but still much depressed sometimes, and over your letters he drops heavy ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... A doctrine held by a follower of Pyrrho, a Greek philosopher of the third century before Christ, who founded the sceptical school. He taught that it is impossible to attain truth, and that men should be ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... the whole, tolerably content to plunge his swallows, or a good proportion of them, into the mud and deposit them for the winter at the bottom of a pond. Professionally conservative, as a fine old Church-of-England clergyman, though constitutionally sceptical, as became one of the earliest of really observant naturalists, he was loath to break flatly with the consensus of contemporary opinion, rustic and philosophic, and found a modus vivendi in the theory that a great many, perhaps a majority, of the swifts and barn-swallows did go to Africa. He had ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... it, pray, a couple of girls like themselves? She scowled quite fiercely at the General as she put the question, but he only chuckled in reply, having already been treated to the history of Nan's first 'At Home' from the lips of an historian more sceptical than sympathetic. ...
— Betty Trevor • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... and pursuits. Their motive, for all this, we need not pause, in this place, to examine. But a distinction may be made between the melancholy of the heart, and the melancholy of the mind: while the latter is sceptical, sour, and misanthropic, the former is passionate, tender, and religious. Those who are under the influence of the one, become inactive, morose, or heedless: detecting the follies of the wisest and the frailties of the best, they scoff at the very name of virtue; they spurn, as visionary and ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... To be sure, some sceptical persons told the whole story very differently. According, to their account, Miss Sarah had been the mistress of M. de Kergrist, and, seeing him utterly ruined, had sent him off one fine morning. They stated, that, the evening ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... mornings. His locks are brown and his face ruddy. In half-an- hour he returns with his face blue, his nose frost-bitten, and his locks white—the latter effect being produced by his breath congealing on his hair and breast, until both are covered with hoar- frost. Perhaps he is of a sceptical nature, prejudiced it may be, in favour of old habits and customs; so that, although told by those who ought to know that it is absolutely necessary to wear moccasins in winter, he prefers the leather boots to which he has been accustomed ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... give it permanence. Prejudice is of ready application to the emergency; it previously engages the mind in a steady course of wisdom and virtue, and does not leave the man hesitating in the moment of decision, sceptical, puzzled, and unresolved. Prejudice renders a man's virtue his habit; and not a series of unconnected acts. Through just prejudice, his duty becomes a ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... hundred and fifty-eight pieces, of which thirteen were Italian operas, many of which were successful.[11] The famous contest between Handel and Buononcini in Italian composition was decided in favour of the former by public acclamation. Those who are sceptical on the score of his composing in Italian, are referred to the well-known air, 'Lord, remember David,' which is to be found in the opera of Sosarmes, commencing with ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XVII. No. 473., Saturday, January 29, 1831 • Various
... Musset was the first who found favor with her heart, it appears; and they were inseparably associated for about three years. This brilliant young poet, so sceptical, so sad, so audacious, so dissolute, was the first of this famous coterie of men to become madly infatuated with George Sand,—but far from the last. It is asserted that each in turn, and many more besides, were the victims of her luring wiles. For many years the ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... man determined to stand firmly on the side of the supernatural with the priest. He went further, and blamed his scepticism. It had cost the world a valuable life. He could not, indeed, be censured for that in any court of inquiry. Sceptical men would doubtless say that he had done rightly in refusing Mr. May his experiment. But Sir Walter now convinced himself that he had done wrongly. At such a time, with landmarks vanishing and all accepted ...
— The Grey Room • Eden Phillpotts
... glance in the clear light satisfied us that the superhuman beauty we almost worshipped, and the splendor that seemed too lavish to be real, were no mere glamor of lamplight or moonlight, but surpassed in the reality all that our stunted, sceptical, Western imaginations, even stimulated as they were, ...
— Little Classics, Volume 8 (of 18) - Mystery • Various |
