"Speculative" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... form other than these two. Expression and concept exhaust it completely. The whole speculative life of man is spent in passing from one to the other ...
— Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic • Benedetto Croce
... to its symbolism, to its mystic relation with the vessel and its uses. But I have to do here with the forms taken by motives, with their morphology rather than with their signification, as the latter must, with reference to archaeologic material, remain greatly speculative. ...
— Ancient art of the province of Chiriqui, Colombia • William Henry Holmes
... agreement as to the fact of evolution. People generally thought the idea absurd, as well as irreligious. All previous efforts on the part of advanced thinkers to persuade mankind of the truth of evolution had been nearly without effect. Among the early philosophers the whole idea was purely speculative. They made no attempt to prove it, and the conception was without influence upon the thinking of the ordinary man. This remains true until the time of Lamarck. This French genius succeeded in persuading not a few people of the validity ...
— The Meaning of Evolution • Samuel Christian Schmucker
... question for the first time. His views seemed to float in the air, without a single previous effort to support them. The whole question of the formation of living things was considered by biologists, until 1859, as pertaining to the province of religion and transcendentalism; even in speculative philosophy, in which the question had been approached from various sides, no one had ventured to give it serious treatment. This was due to the dualistic system of Immanuel Kant, who taught a natural system of evolution as far as the inorganic world was concerned; but, on the whole, ...
— The Evolution of Man, V.1. • Ernst Haeckel
... eloquence; he has passages of shrewd and felicitous wit; he has crisp epigram; he has passages of exquisitely touched observation of nature. Yet he is not a great writer.... Carlyle formulates perfectly the defects of his friend's poetic and literary productions when he says: 'For me it is too ethereal, speculative, theoretic; I will have all things condense themselves, take shape and body, if they are to have my ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... heart and reason of our reason, but our magistrate, rather; and mechanically to obey his commands, however strange they may be, remains our only moral duty. Conceptions of criminal law have in fact played a great part in defining our relations with him. Our relations with speculative truth show the same externality. One of our duties is to know truth, and rationalist thinkers have always assumed it to be our sovereign duty. But in scholastic theism we find truth already instituted and established without our help, complete ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James
... two minds, one simple and practical, the other sensitive and speculative, did not move in the same atmosphere, and could not understand one another. Ambrose was in the condition of excitement and bewilderment produced by the first stirrings of the Reformation upon enthusiastic minds. He had studied the Vulgate, made out something of the Greek ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... quite true; but it might have been vastly different. That is the point that most concerns the bank. Whoever took the money"—and he bowed, deprecatingly, with ironical consideration to Mortimer—"must have needed a thousand dollars for—well, some speculative purpose, perhaps. Good fortune has enabled the some one to make good, and the money has ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... figure—spangled, gaudy, standing among her lions— seemed by these. To think of her, his veins thumping thus, was an insult to all three: to Delia, one unpardonable. And yet he could not take his eyes off her. Her performance was splendid. He was interested, speculative. She certainly had flown high; for, again, why should not a dompteuse be a decent woman? And here were money, fame of a kind, and an occupation that sent his blood bounding. A dompteur! He had tamed moose, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... days, the last beating of the failing pulse of the Old Year, throbbed slowly and heavily away, the baby took upon its wan visage a strange expression—the solemn expression of worn-out and suffering age. Its blue eyes grew more solemnly speculative and dreamy, and after a while it seemed to lose all taste for the petty things of this world and the low desires of mere humanity. It lay very quiet in Liz's arms; it never cried, and was no longer fretful, and it seemed to listen with a sort of mild approval to the tones of her voice as ...
— Stories By English Authors: London • Various
... be necessary to consider inflammation at more length. The theory of inflammation has passed through various stages. At first heat was considered as its essential and dominant feature, then redness, then exudative swelling; while the speculative neuropathologists consider pain the fons et ...
— The World's Greatest Books - Volume 15 - Science • Various
... contrariwise to big business practices. They took virtually their first step in "trust-busting" when they tried to break up the Northern Securities Company, which had been concocted to handle the celebrated Northern Pacific case. Labor troubles supervened. Many great speculative stock campaigns collapsed. The banks yielded to the imperative need to reduce credits. The year 1902 had almost experienced a widespread panic: but the marshaling of great private resources had restored confidence temporarily, and ...
— A Brief History of Panics • Clement Juglar
... follow the lure to that sort of speculative inquiry he and Wade were fond of. He said, with an abrupt return to the personal ground: "Then you don't think Jack Wilmington need be any further considered ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... his Familie to dissemble," (i.e., to conceal his religion when questioned by the magistrate); and (2.) "H.N. maketh God the Author of sinne, and the sinner guiltless," (but no proof is alleged that this speculative impiety was carried out ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 43, Saturday, August 24, 1850 • Various
... directly opposite nature, these men presume to talk to us of impossibilities! We may rather contend that they furnish a fresh proof of the soundness of our reasonings. We lay it down as a fundamental position, that speculative knowledge alone, that mere superficial cursory considerations, will be of no avail. Nothing is to be done without the diligent continued use of the appointed method. They themselves afford an instance of the truth of our assertions; and while they supply no argument against the efficacy of ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... lessons is governed by experimental psychology. And this trend, without doubt, is in contrast to that of the past, which was governed by speculative psychology, on which the whole of the educational methods commonly in use in ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori
... peace abroad and prosperity at home. The latter was interrupted for a time in 1720 by the speculative madness created by the "South-Sea Bubble." Men were almost crazed by the rise in the value of shares from 100 pounds to 1,000 pounds; and then plunged into despair and ruin when they suddenly dropped to nothing. The suffering caused by this wreck ...
— The Evolution of an Empire • Mary Parmele
... world, life, the whole spirit of things had suddenly grown sinister, of the quality of nightmare. It was true that all the ground of this ominous depression which had darkened round him, was conjectural and speculative, that diplomacy, backed by the horror of war which surely all civilised nations and responsible govermnents must share, had, so far from saying its last, not yet said its first word; that the wits of all the Cabinets of Europe were at this moment ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... three times wearing around, providing they didn't come to mending before that," mused the "Pet," with a speculative look in her blue eyes, but with a quiver of the dimples that evoked another paroxysm of laughter from her audience. "But I say, Sadie," she went on with the next breath, "Miss Minturn is a downright sweet-looking girl, ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... as his manner on the occasions to which I refer was always merry, such talk awoke little uneasiness; and I believe that he never had at the moment any conscious attraction to the subject stronger than a speculative one. At the same time, however, I believe that the speculative attraction itself had its roots in the misery with which in other and prevailing moods ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... systematic evasion of the social hardship caused now-a-days by new inventions and economies in method. There will exist throughout the world an organized economic survey, which will continually prepare and revise estimates of the need of iron, coal, cloth and so forth in the coming months; the blind speculative production of our own times is due merely to the dark ignorance in which we work in these matters, and with such a survey, employment will lose much of the cruel intermittence it now displays. The men in these great productive services, quite equally with teachers ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells
... is either speculative or practical. In the first case we study merely that we may know; in the latter that we ...
— Deductive Logic • St. George Stock
... been discussing philosophy—or, rather, I had been feeling her out; and from a sketch of Spinoza's anticipations of the modern mind, through the speculative interpretations of the latest achievements in physics of Sir Oliver Lodge and Sir William Ramsay, I had come, as usual, to De Casseres, whom I was quoting, when Mr. Pike snarled orders to ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... the name of the brokerage firm that always handled Jadwin's rare speculative ventures. Converse was dead long since, but the firm still retained its original name. The house was as old and as well established as any on the Board of Trade. It had a reputation for conservatism, and was known more as a Bear than a Bull concern. It was immensely wealthy and immensely important. ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... not question the authenticity of the Scriptural narrative of the Virgin-mother and Bethlehem babe, and the Messianic mission of Christ Jesus; but in our time no Christian Scientist will give chimerical wings to his imagination, or advance speculative theories as to the recurrence ...
— Retrospection and Introspection • Mary Baker Eddy
... man which gives such weight to the very sweeping conclusions on social subjects to which he was driven in his later days. A judgment which condemns the whole system of Poor Laws, for instance, falls with very different weight from a mere speculative theorist and from a practical observer whose mind is constitutionally averse from extreme conclusions. Throughout however we see this intellectual moderation jostling with a moral fervour which feels restlessly ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... that a certain speculative writer of quasi-scientific repute, writing long before the Martian invasion, did forecast for man a final structure not unlike the actual Martian condition. His prophecy, I remember, appeared in November ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells
... national demand of the Volunteers to have a free constitution, that the Volunteers would have been fully justified in taking up arms in defence of the country." He, however, for his part, considered the question a merely speculative one, as, so far as he knew, no one contemplated an appeal to physical force, under the present circumstances, which would be madness, folly, and wickedness. He considered it very unwise to be putting those tests when ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke
... seconds, but for thousands and even hundreds of thousands of seconds! And still there is no end, no end where the weary mind can rest and contemplate; the finite mind of man can only cry out that there is no limit. In spite of all its strivings and groping by aid of speculative philosophy, the finite cannot attain to the Infinite, nor get any nearer to where the mighty sea of time breaks in noiseless waves on the dim ...
— Science and the Infinite - or Through a Window in the Blank Wall • Sydney T. Klein
... with startled interest. Now and then he cocked up his speculative eyes, and gazed fixedly into the preternaturally solemn face of Byers, who reiterated, "A good old ...
— Down the Ravine • Charles Egbert Craddock (real name: Murfree, Mary Noailles)
... get education at all risks. Put him on Juan Fernandez, and he would make a spelling-book first, and a salt-pan afterward. In coelum, jusseris, ibit,—or the other way either,—it is all one, so anything is to be got by it. Yet, after all, thin, speculative Jonathan is more like the Englishman of two centuries ago than John Bull himself is. He has lost somewhat in solidity, has become fluent and adaptable, but more of the original groundwork of character remains. He feels more at home with Fulke Greville, Herbert of Cherbury, Quarles, George ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... of fact, no such inquiry came in, but as Miss Joyce, my secretary, knew that Mr. Forbes was in Europe, I was conscious for some months afterwards that Miss Joyce's eyes occasionally rested on me in a speculative and ...
— Sight Unseen • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... the free man! He realized that this was a flag of danger, and he answered the warning by sedulously avoiding Bambi for the next few days. She was too busy with the plans for the book to notice, although she caught him looking at her once or twice in a strange, speculative way. Their peace was broken, however, a few days after Mr. Strong's famous visit by a letter from the Belasco office, accompanied by the play. Mr. Belasco regretted that the play was not just what he wanted. It had some excellent points, ...
— Bambi • Marjorie Benton Cooke
... in a way that showed me his brainstorm over Robert Gordon had been checked. But there was a startled look in his eyes which changed to a more speculative scrutiny before ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison
... Buxton and Prof. W. W. Kinsley, the pioneers of modern Falls Church, first settled here, the increase of population has been slow, but it has been of steady and sterling growth. The conservatism of the land-owners has given less rapid growth than were its tone purely speculative. The population as reported by the United States census for 1890 was 792; the census of 1900 gives the population at 1007, an increase of over 27 per cent. during the ten years. The tax roll for 1903 shows property of ...
— A Virginia Village • Charles A. Stewart
... and their pale colour would enable the sun's rays to be reflected to a greater extent than if the material were of the blackness of basalt.[4] So much for the material. We have now to consider the structure of the moon's surface, and here we find ourselves treading on less speculative and safer ground. All astronomers since the time of Schroter seem to be of accord in the opinion that the remarkable features of the moon's surface are in some measure of volcanic origin, and we shall presently proceed to ...
— Volcanoes: Past and Present • Edward Hull
... tell me anything about this scheme that you've not told me before," declared Cressler. "You'll win, of course. Crookes & Co. are like Rothschild—earthquakes couldn't budge 'em. But I promised myself years ago to keep out of the speculative market, and I mean to stick ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... little impression; and even if they served to convince some people, it would only be during the instant that they see the demonstration; an hour afterwards they fear to have deceived themselves." Moreover, this kind of proof could lead only to a speculative knowledge, and to know God only in that way was not to know Him at all. The only way to reach God was to deny the value of reason, and to deny reason ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... new-fashioned slang to give spice and vigour to his conversation. 'There isn't a move on the board that I don't know.' He advised his friends excellently, and there were perhaps half a score of fairly well-to-do speculative people who had to thank him, and him alone, for the comfort they lived in and the consideration they enjoyed. He had been wise for others all his life, and in his own interests he had always acted like a greenhorn. ...
— Young Mr. Barter's Repentance - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... worthy of observation, that among emigrants possessing the qualities of industry and perseverance so essential to success in all countries, those who possess the smallest share of original talent and imagination, and the least of a speculative turn of mind, are usually the most successful. They follow the beaten track and prosper. However humbling this reflection may be to human vanity, it should operate as a salutary check on presumption and hasty conclusions. After a residence of sixteen years in Canada, during which my young ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... some foregoing remarks of a speculative nature were made merely to bring out curious features of alternate currents or electric impulses. By their help we may cause a body to emit more light, while at a certain mean temperature, than it would emit if brought to that temperature ...
— Experiments with Alternate Currents of High Potential and High - Frequency • Nikola Tesla
... Speculative Science may be divided into three kinds[13]: Physics, Mathematics, and Theology. Physics deals with motion and is not abstract or separable (i.e. [Greek: anupexairetos]); for it is concerned with the forms ...
— The Theological Tractates and The Consolation of Philosophy • Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius
... Copernican theory, he wrote an essay on the primary motion, attributing it to the rotation of the earth, and this not for the mathematical reasons brought forward by Copernicus, but, as he himself says, on physical or metaphysical grounds. In 1595, having more leisure from lectures, he turned his speculative mind to the number, size, and motion of the planetary orbits. He first tried simple numerical relations, but none of them appeared to be twice, thrice, or four times as great as another, although he felt convinced that there was ...
— Kepler • Walter W. Bryant
... night, ruminative, speculative. The breeze which had rippled across the Indian corn during the day had sunk to rest. The darkened field lay tranquil under the stars big and luminous. From far across the veldt came the occasional beating of a buzzard's wings, like the beating of muffled drums. A patch of gum ...
— Antony Gray,—Gardener • Leslie Moore
... leather trousers. That made me nervous. When he piled us all in with our grips, he put me in the seat beside him, whether I liked it or not. I was fool enough to tell him I loved to travel fast. What do you think he said? Well, he eyed me in a rather cool and speculative way and said, with a smile, 'Miss, I reckon anything you love an' want bad will be coming to you out here!' I didn't know whether it was delightful candor or impudence. Then he said to all of us: 'Shore you had better wrap up in ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... greatest services which the National Trust is doing for the country is the preserving of the natural beauties of our English scenery. It acquires, through the generosity of its supporters, special tracts of lovely country, and says to the speculative builder "Avaunt!" It maintains the landscape for the benefit of the public. People can always go there and enjoy the scenery, and townsfolk can fill their lungs with fresh air, and children play on the greensward. These oases afford sanctuary to birds and beasts and butterflies, ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield
... invasions of novelty. His athletic intellect was exercised in all manner of curious questions. The only matter about which it never concerned itself was reality, the existence of which he probably doubted. At any rate, he considered truth, right, wrong, to be subjects for speculative philosophy. As a practical man, he had minutely acquainted himself with all the things that behoved to be believed by an orthodox Brahmin, and he was not the man to give way to mere facts. This frame of mind begot in him a large tolerance, ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA
... magistrate presiding over a real commonwealth. And indeed for most young men a college thesis is but an exercise for sharpening the wits, rarely dangerous in its later effects. But in the case of Samuel Adams, the ability to distinguish the speculative from the actual reality seemed to diminish as the years passed. After 1764, relieved of the pressure of life's anxieties and daily nourishing his mind on premises and conclusions reasonably abstracted from the relative and the conditioned ...
— The Eve of the Revolution - A Chronicle of the Breach with England, Volume 11 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Carl Becker
... Secretary of War a letter from Mr. Westmoreland, Wilmington, complaining that he is not allowed by government agents to transport cotton to that port, where his steamers are, in redemption of Confederate States bonds, while private persons, for speculative purposes, are, through the favor (probably for a consideration) of government officials, enabled to ship thousands of bales, and he submits a copy of a correspondence with Col. Sims, Assistant Quartermaster-General, and Lieut. Col. Bayne, ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... just when the ship was beginning to drift in moral helplessness. He was the founder of a school of practical wisdom, singularly well adapted to the Roman character and intellect, which were always practical rather than speculative; and far better suited to ordinary human life than the old rigid and austere Stoic ethics, of which the younger Cato was the only eminent Roman disciple. From what we know of Panaetius' ethical teaching,—and ...
— Social life at Rome in the Age of Cicero • W. Warde Fowler
... He tried various expedients, with a clumsy haste which would have removed any chance of succeeding that he might have had. He tried to borrow, but was everywhere refused. In his despair, he staked the little he had left on wildly speculative ventures, and lost it all. From that moment there was a complete change in his character. He relapsed into an alarming state of terror: still he said nothing: but he was bitter, violent, harsh, horribly sad. But still, when he was with ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... of the matters of faith that they should in some measure be acquainted with and believe, that are admitted into full communion with the Church of Christ. And these and other truths must not be known and believed in a general, notional, light, and speculative manner; but heartily, powerfully, and particularly: not for others, but for themselves; otherwise their faith and knowledge will no way ...
— The Divine Right of Church Government • Sundry Ministers Of Christ Within The City Of London
... citizen with efficient senses, sound organs, and a good digestion, she should clearly be secured a sufficient reward for that natural service to make her willing to undertake and repeat it. Whether she be financed in the undertaking by herself, or by the father, or by a speculative capitalist, or by a new department of, say, the Royal Dublin Society, or (as at present) by the War Office maintaining her "on the strength" and authorizing a particular soldier to marry her, or by a local authority under a by-law directing that women may under certain circumstances ...
— Revolutionist's Handbook and Pocket Companion • George Bernard Shaw
... Barwood was of a speculative turn of mind, and had also by nature a strong leaning towards whatever was curious and out of the common. These proclivities Megilp's conversation, pursuits, and studio full of trumpery were calculated to gratify. A moderate sort ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 1 • Various
... rather hazy and speculative contribution on Okenian lines to the problem of the relation of Arthropods to Vertebrates, likening the carapace of Crustacea to an enormously developed hyoid, the appendages of the tail to the ventral ...
— Form and Function - A Contribution to the History of Animal Morphology • E. S. (Edward Stuart) Russell
... stream. His scope of vision was indeed great, but it had its limits, and these were not imposed by time or necessity, but by the unyielding will of his own prejudices. As his virtues were massive, so were his errors grievous. He ventured to grasp the great speculative themes of existence with a mind that was neither profound nor suggestive. He swam with all the wondrous ease of an athlete through the billows and across the currents and counter-currents of elegant literature, of politics, of theology, yet possessed not the diver's power to win ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... had adopted uncommonly rigid and severe views of religion, imitating in her ideas of reformed faith the very worst errors of the Catholics, in limiting the benefit of the gospel to those who profess their own speculative tenets. ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... trudging gravely along behind the moving office fixtures, their goggle eyes cast down in Christian meditation, their horizontal ears flopping solemnly in unison with their measured tread. Ever and anon the leader halts, uprolls the speculative eye, arrests the oscillation of the ears, laying them rigidly back along the neck, exalts the conscious tail, drops the lank jaw, and warbles a psalm of praise that shakes the blind hills from their eternal repose. His companions ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile
... as it then was. The students of those polite days insisted on retaining their hats in the class-room. There was a cab-stance in front of the College; and 'Carriage Entrance' was posted above the main arch, on what the writer pleases to call 'coarse, unclassic boards.' The benches of the 'Speculative' then, as now, were red; but all other Societies (the 'Dialectic' is the only survivor) met downstairs, in some rooms of which it is pointedly said that 'nothing else could conveniently be made of them.' However horrible these dungeons may have been, it ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... fascinating it may appear at first sight, to look carefully into the facts, and to endeavor to determine independently whether it is well founded or not. On the other hand, there is some danger to be apprehended from a tendency, sometimes observed, to denounce everything speculative, no matter how broad the basis of facts upon which it rests may be. Without legitimate speculation, it is clear that there could be no great progress in any subject. As far as the hypothesis under consideration is concerned, the writer is firmly of the opinion ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 633, February 18, 1888 • Various
... hypothesis founded on the opinion of Major Rennel, carries with it no evidence whatever, but the speculative theory of that learned geographer. The identity or connection of the two Niles, and the consequent water communication between[312] Cairo and Timbuctoo receives (supposing the Quarterly Review to be correct), as our intelligence respecting Africa increases, additional confirmation: and even the ...
— An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa • Abd Salam Shabeeny
... yet, the thought of any attempt to withhold from her a knowledge of evil brought a sardonic smile to his lips. She had as yet everything to learn of the world about her. Could such learning be imparted to her free from error or hypothesis, and apart from the fiat of the speculative human mind? It must be; for he knew from experience that she would accept his teaching only as he presented every apparent fact, every object, every event, as a reflection in some degree of her immanent God, and subject to rigid demonstration. Where historical events externalized only the evil ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... the effect of this statement. Willie having never heard of such things before, and having a thoughtful and speculative as well as waggish turn of mind, listened with open eyes and mouth and earnest attention, ...
— Fighting the Flames • R.M. Ballantyne
... hinting, Monsieur Valmont, that I engaged others until my money was gone, then came to you with a speculative proposal. Let me assure you such is not the case. Incompetent hands, I grant you, but the hands were my own. For the past six months I have lived practically as my uncle lived. I have rummaged that library from floor to ceiling. It was left in a frightful state, littered with old newspapers, ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr
... reached Dodson and Fogg. He speaks of "the kind generous people o' the perfession 'as sets their clerks to work to find out little disputes among their neighbours and acquaintances as wants settlin' by means of law suits." This system, however, cannot be checked, and "the speculative attorney" even in ...
— Bardell v. Pickwick • Percy Fitzgerald
... angry debates in our senate, and perpetual tumults and confusions abroad; until these maxims are entirely altered, or else, which God forbid, the spirits of the people are depressed, and they become inured to disgrace and servitude. This has long been the prospect in the minds of speculative men. The body of the people are now in council. Their opposition grows into a system. They are united and resolute. And if the British administration and government do not return to the principles of moderation and equity, the evil which they profess to aim at preventing by ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, vol. III. • Samuel Adams
... the despotism of public opinion in the United States, have already excited some remarks in this country, and will probably give occasion to more. As stated in the preface to this edition, the editor does not conceive himself called upon to discuss the speculative opinions of the author and supposes he will best discharge his duty by confining his observations to what he deems errors of fact or law. But in reference to this particular subject, it seems due to the author to remark, that he visited the United States ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al
... no speculative question, but with the practical problem of saving a ruined soul; and neither logical ingenuity nor divine suggestion, but the inherent spiritual significance of the situation, urges his thought along the lonely path of prophecy. The love for ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... put into universal practice, and may always be depended upon within half a degree, which is sufficient for all nautical purposes. If, therefore, observing and calculating were considered as necessary qualifications for every sea officer, the labours of the speculative theorist to solve this problem might be remitted, without much injury to mankind: Neither will it be so difficult to acquire this qualification, or put it in practice, as may at first appear; for, with the assistance ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... was a philosophical poet. But his philosophy was much more definite than Coleridge's; it gave substance to his character and edge to his intellect, and, in the end, can scarcely be distinguished from the emotion generating his verse. There is, however, no trace of originality in his speculative writing, and we need not regret that, after hesitating whether to be a metaphysician or a poet, he decided against philosophy. Before finally settling to poetry, he at one time projected a complete and systematic account of the operations of the human mind. ...
— Shelley • Sydney Waterlow
... altogether from contact with this world and from all possibility of action in it. This world, in fact, is to him, as to all Indian saints and most Indian philosophers, phenomenal and unreal. Of the speculative problems raised by this conception I need not speak here. But it belongs to my purpose to bring out its bearing upon conduct. All conduct depends upon the conception of Good and Evil. Anti-moralists, like Nietzsche, assume and require these ...
— Appearances - Being Notes of Travel • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... and nation, the entire citizenship in each case concerned is in details operating the government. In certain cantons it is done in every detail. Doing this, the Swiss are moving rapidly in practically grappling with social problems that elsewhere are hardly more than speculative topics with scholars and theorists. In other countries, consequently, interested lookers-on, having from different points of view taken notes of democratic Switzerland, are, through newspaper, magazine, and book, describing its unprecedented progress and suggesting to their ...
— Direct Legislation by the Citizenship through the Initiative and Referendum • James W. Sullivan
... "that the party holding to the only constitutional policy is to be supported at all hazards, and I think the great party to which we belong is that party. Our principles are all true, and our measures are all just. Speculative persons and dreamers talk about independent political action. But politics always beget parties. Governments are always managed by parties, and parties are ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... be one of the later writings of Plato, in which the style has begun to alter, and the dramatic and poetical element has become subordinate to the speculative and philosophical. In the development of abstract thought great advances have been made on the Protagoras or the Phaedrus, and even on the Republic. But there is a corresponding diminution of artistic skill, a want of character in the persons, a laboured ...
— Philebus • Plato
... that Benin and Portuguese cloths are sold at Egga by many of its inhabitants, so that it would appear that some kind of communication is kept up between the sea-coast and this place. The people are very speculative and enterprising, and numbers of them employ all their time solely in trading up and down the Niger. They live entirely in their canoes, over which they have a shed, that answers completely every purpose for which it is ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... he want?" inquired his wife. He had sunk on his doorstep on coming home at dusk, and sat with speculative eyes on the pale western sky, while his wife sat judicially, quite filling with her heated bulk a large rocking-chair, placed for greater coolness in front of the step, in the middle ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... and heart, the worship of Beauty. The entire series illustrates a tribute to Beauty expressed in the first one—"Delight in her made trouble in my mind." This mental disturbance is here the spur to composition. They are experiments in relative, meditative, speculative poetry; and while they contain some memorable lines, and heighten one's respect for the dignity and sincerity of their author's temperament, they are surely not so successful as his other work. They are not clearly articulate. Instead of the perfect ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... apt to employ reason merely as an instrument for acquiring the sciences, whereas we ought to avail ourselves of the sciences, as an instrument for perfecting our reason; justness of mind being infinitely more important than all the speculative knowledge which we can obtain by means of sciences the most solid. This ought to lead wise men to make their sciences the exercise and not the occupation of their mental powers. Men are not born to employ all their time in measuring lines, in considering ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... for the political side of the 'philosophy of the century,' if we are to use this too comprehensive expression for all the products of a very complex and many-sided outburst of speculative energy. Apart from its political side, we find M. Taine's formula no less unsatisfactory for its other phases. He seems to us not to go back nearly far enough in his search for the intellectual origins, any more than for the political origins, of his contemporary France. He has ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 8: France in the Eighteenth Century • John Morley
... abates; he acknowledges that they are the representatives rather than the corrupters of the world. He also becomes more dogmatic and constructive, passing beyond the range either of the political or the speculative ideas of the real Socrates. In one passage Plato himself seems to intimate that the time had now come for Socrates, who had passed his whole life in philosophy, to give his own opinion and not to be always repeating the notions of other men. There is no evidence that either the idea of good ...
— The Republic • Plato
... while it cannot be said to clash, takes on a variety of shades—as needs will happen among men, who, at one on basic principles, on the material substructure of institutional superstructure, cannot but yield to the allurements of speculative thought on matters as yet hidden in the future, and below the horizon. For one, I hold there is as little ground for rejecting monogamy, by reason of the taint that clings to its inception, as there would be ground for rejecting co-operation, by reason of the like taint that accompanied ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... then ensued for the two on the part of the more speculative among the buyers, who were willing to risk a little possible loss on the chance of obtaining two slaves for a trifle more than the price of one; and finally they were purchased by a man who had all the appearance of being an overseer on some extensive ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood
... get the cessio, when the bonorums are all spent—But what, are you puzzling in your pockets to seek your only memorial among old play-bills, letters requesting a meeting of the Faculty, rules of the Speculative Society,* syllabus' of lectures—all the miscellaneous contents of a young advocate's pocket, which contains ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... fundamental sentiment which opposes the cumulus of violence and usurpation, which in a great degree constitutes historic international law and corrects the deductions made from purely speculative theories,—a sentiment we accept without demur, and which is asserted like the axioms that serve as the basis and foundation of all reasoning and as a rule inspiring ...
— Latin America and the United States - Addresses by Elihu Root • Elihu Root
... prepared the scheme of such a paper and submitted it to several publishers before he and his associates determined upon carrying it themselves into execution. And soon after it was started, as will be seen, the services of a speculative printer were ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... of the pawnbroker's shop be calculated to attract the attention, or excite the interest, of the speculative pedestrian, its interior cannot fail to produce the same effect in an increased degree. The front door, which we have before noticed, opens into the common shop, which is the resort of all those customers whose habitual ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... to the humdrum of existence—on this soil a grave race flourishes, of quick conscience and serious life. The old saying Frisia non cantat marks the lack of exuberance and of the spirit of revelry. But shy reticence finds compensation in good-natured humor. Unenthusiastic but substantial realism, speculative meditation, and a certain didactic tone make the Low German country the home of the fable and the great epic. That such a great dramatist as Hebbel was also a scion of this stock seems almost exceptional. ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... at the age of eight-and-twenty making a name for himself on the headquarters staff of the Customs Department. His thin, eager face, with its hooked nose, pale blue eyes and light, rather untidy-looking hair, formed a true index of his nimble, somewhat speculative mind. What he did, he did with his might. He was keenly interested in whatever he took up, showing a tendency, indeed, to ride his hobbies to death. He had a particular penchant for puzzles of all kinds, and many a knotty problem ...
— The Pit Prop Syndicate • Freeman Wills Crofts
... and perfectly separable: nor is it to be doubted that they were equally separable in the learned languages."—Walkers's Observations on Gr. and Lat. Accent and Quantity, Sec.20; Key, p. 326. In the speculative essay here cited, Walker meant by accent the rising or the falling inflection,—an upward or a downward slide of the voice: and by quantity, nothing but the open or close sound of some vowel; as of "the a in scatter" and ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... of the new star of 1892, known as Nova Aurigae, is also indicated on the map. While this never made a brilliant appearance, it gave rise to a greater variety of speculative theories than any previous phenomenon of the kind. Although not recognized until January 24, 1892, this star, as photographic records prove, was in existence on December 9, 1891. At its brightest it barely exceeded magnitude four and a half, and its maximum occurred ...
— Pleasures of the telescope • Garrett Serviss
... deduction from this agreeable numerical fact was, that in an equally short period your agent's payments to your bank account would also be doubled. In the meantime the drays were busy carting the wool to the seaports as fast as they could be loaded, whilst speculative drovers rode all about the country buying up the fat cattle and wethers from every run. These were wanted to supply the West Coast Diggings which had just "broken out" (as the curious phrase goes there), and so was every description of grain and ...
— Station Amusements • Lady Barker
... of speculative pressure on the Thai baht, the government decided to float the currency in July 1997, the symbolic beginning of the country's current economic crisis. The crisis—which began in the country's financial sector—has spread throughout the economy. ...
— The 1999 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... chalky-faced self-sufficiency. He has said very little, and has eaten nothing, but had a sleep this afternoon for a couple of hours, out in the patio on a chaise-longue. It hurt him, I think, to find his own children look at him with such cold and speculative eyes. But he has changed shockingly since they last saw him. And they have so much to fill up their little lives. They haven't yet reached the age when life teaches them they'd better stick to what's given them, even though there's a bitter tang ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... the ashes out of his pipe into a metal tray, refilled it, lighted it, and then puffed meditatively, gazing at Hugh with kind but speculative eyes. ...
— The Plastic Age • Percy Marks
... in Paris is the whereabouts of the Turks. They must be found and observed. My chief difficulty will be to keep that delightful commissary from imprisoning them, if, as I imagine, we find the little thief a captive in the Rue Barbette. So you see my actions are speculative. Yours, on the other hand, will ...
— The Albert Gate Mystery - Being Further Adventures of Reginald Brett, Barrister Detective • Louis Tracy
... basis, it was good for eighty. To know which way he would decide, to extract any information from that inscrutable mind—that were to open a steel vault with a pen-knife. "All trading," the Sun assured its readers, "will be speculative; it is considered a ...
— The House of Mystery • William Henry Irwin
... the exercise of Johnson's modesty, when he was called upon to compare his own arduous performance, not with those of other individuals, (in which case his inflexible regard to truth would have been violated, had he affected diffidence,) but with speculative perfection[851]; as he, who can outstrip all his competitors in the race, may yet be sensible of his deficiency when he runs against time. Well might he say, that 'the English Dictionary was written with little assistance of the learned[852],' for ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... were the rich men who kept chariots and competed at the Olympic games. In these Sicilian cities the intellectual improvement kept pace with the material, and the little town of Elea supported the two greatest speculative philosophers of Greece—Parmenides and Zeno. Empedocles, of ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... had only yesterday achieved his second birthday, watched, with a speculative eye, his nurse. He was seated on the floor with his back to the high window that was flaming now with the light of the dying sun; his nurse was by the fire, her head, shadowed huge and fantastic on the wall, nodded and nodded and nodded. Ernest Henry was, in figure, ...
— The Golden Scarecrow • Hugh Walpole
... appointed, it might, upon experiment, have been found less convenient than some other time. The same answer may be given to the question put on the other side. And it may be added that the supposed danger of a gradual change being merely speculative, it would have been hardly advisable upon that speculation to establish, as a fundamental point, what would deprive several States of the convenience of having the elections for their own governments and for the national government ...
— The Federalist Papers
... that were sad. If it is strange for me to look back from a distance both in time and space on these bygone adventures of our youth, it must be stranger for you who tread the same streets—who may to-morrow open the door of the old Speculative, where we begin to rank with Scott and Robert Emmet and the beloved and inglorious Macbean—or may pass the corner of the close where that great society, the L. J. R., held its meetings and drank its beer, sitting in the seats of Burns and his companions. I think I see you, moving there ...
— Kidnapped • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Augustine) advanced the question to the Theological stage, by connecting it with the great doctrines of Original Sin and Predestination; in which stage it shared all the speculative difficulties attaching to these doctrines. The Theological world, however, has always been divided between Free-will and Necessity; and probably the weightiest names are to be found among the Necessitarians. No ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain
... other land of the island, though that too is very elevated and rugged. Our telescopes revealed serrated gullies upon the mountain sides, and showed us the fastnesses of the island in a manner that made us long to explore them. We deceived ourselves with the hope that some speculative fisherman might come out to us with oranges and grapes for sale. He would have realised a handsome sum if he had, but unfortunately none was aware of the advantages offered, and so we looked and longed in vain. The other islands were Palma, Gomera, and Ferro, all of them lofty, ...
— A First Year in Canterbury Settlement • Samuel Butler
... conduct is contrary to the first and great duties of social virtue. Ought you to quarrel with any man because he is taller or shorter, fairer or blacker than yourself? And yet we can no more help our differing in speculative opinions than in stature or complexion. If you happen to feel the knowledge and perception of divine things supernaturally implanted on your mind, rejoice and be happy, but let not your Wrath arise against those who are not blest with the same sensations. Would you ...
— Critical Remarks on Sir Charles Grandison, Clarissa, and Pamela (1754) • Anonymous
... include, according to Professor Masson's subdivision, (a) Biographies, such as Shakespeare or Pope—Joan of Arc falls here, yet has some claim to a place in the first class; (b) Historical essays, like The Caesars; (c) Speculative and Theological essays; (d) Essays in Political Economy and Politics; (e) Papers of Literary Theory and Criticism, such as the brilliant discussions of Rhetoric, Style, and Conversation, and the famous On the Knocking at the Gate in 'Macbeth.' As ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... usual form. The great concern in those times, was to lay all religion upon a level; in order to which, this maxim was advanced, "That no man ought to be denied the liberty of serving his country upon account of a different belief in speculative opinions," under which term some people were apt to include every doctrine of Christianity: however, this Act, in favour of the Quakers, was only temporary, in order to keep them in constant dependence, and expired of course after a certain term, if it were not ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift
... informs us, with a carefully-cultivated taste for the fine arts, who was considered by his contemporaries an excellent judge of a picture or a sculpture, though in Stewart's opinion he appeared interested in works of art less as instruments of direct enjoyment than as materials for speculative discussions about the principles of human nature involved in their production. Smith seems to have been one of Foulis's chief practical advisers in the work of the Academy of Design, in settling such details, for example, as the pictures which ought ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae
... left a pleasant atmosphere of excitement behind him when he disappeared between the portieres. At once the company broke into eager, speculative whispers that soon grew to a perfect storm of shrill inquiry. Every one was guessing, and every one was guessing as loudly as possible in order to be heard above the clamour. It might have been observed that at least three or four of the servants shot furtive glances in ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon
... refreshments thrown in to boot. So he got on a long and continuous spree, and went to the bad, until his wife had to divorce him and turn him out to "root hog or die." Then, after a while, he began to rally and reform; and a grand, speculative idea striking him, he traded his faithful squirrel dog and his old shot gun for a warrantee deed for one hundred acres of land in the upright region of Cleveland County. Then, as Wesley began to prosper, he found himself in need ...
— The Southern Soldier Boy - A Thousand Shots for the Confederacy • James Carson Elliott
... cheap slop-shops in Market Street. And after all the care Jane and me took of her, giving up our time and experience to her, she never so much as made Jane a single present." Popular opinion, which regarded Mrs. Stiver's attention as purely speculative, was not shocked at this unprofitable denouement; but when Peg refused to give anything to clear the mortgage off the new Presbyterian church, and even declined to take shares in the Union Ditch, considered by many as an equally sacred and safe investment, she ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... principles been merely inert or speculative. For the last ten or twelve years slavery has altered her tactics, and from a defensive she has become an aggressive power. Every compromise which the moderation of former times had erected to stem the course of this monster ...
— Narrative of the Life of J.D. Green, a Runaway Slave, from Kentucky • Jacob D. Green
... them unless they have time, heaps of time, and an oppressive stock of enthusiasm, and I may add, fascinating experience, upon which to draw. The last-mentioned quality is invaluable in all such enterprises. If you have it, full play is permitted the speculative, if not the imaginative, faculties. If you have it not, then the work is merely a brutal exercise, in ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... expression—will, more likely than not, elect is in preparation preferentially to is being prepared. If there are any who, in their zealotry for the congruous, choose to adhere to the new form in its entire range of exchangeability for the old, let it be hoped that they will find, in Mr. Marsh's speculative approbation of consistency, full amends for the discomfort of encountering smiles or frowns. At the same time, let them be mindful of the career of Mr. White, with his black flag and no quarter. The dead ...
— The Verbalist • Thomas Embly Osmun, (AKA Alfred Ayres)
... and popular theology on the other is this: Shall Science explain cause and effect as being 126:18 both natural and spiritual? Or shall all that is beyond the cognizance of the material senses be called supernatural, and be left to the mercy of speculative 126:21 hypotheses? ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy |
