"Unphilosophical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... thing has to come out. You can keep happiness a secret, but sorrow and shame have to come out—I don't know why, but they do. Then, when they come out, we feel as if the means of their publicity were the cause of them. It's very unphilosophical." They walked slowly along in silence for a few moments, and then Matt's revery broke out again in words: "Well, it's to be seen now whether she has the strength that bears, or the strength that breaks. The way she held ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... unable to show how the existing arrangement is best; although I never doubted that there must be a satisfactory reason for this seeming imperfection. To suppose otherwise, would be highly unphilosophical, since we constantly see, as the circle of our knowledge is enlarged, many mysteries in nature ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth
... regard it as highly unwise and dangerous, in the present state and present prospects of physical and physiological science. We should expect the philosophical atheist or skeptic to take this ground; also, until better informed, the unlearned and unphilosophical believer; but we should think that the thoughtful theistic philosopher would take the other side. Not to do so seems to concede that only supernatural events can be shown to be designed, which no theist can admit—seems also to misconceive the scope and meaning of all ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... also perfectly satisfied that they may be most easily and triumphantly refuted. But at present we do not mean to touch this argument; we shall reserve it for another work. In the mean time, we must be permitted to express the sentiment, that a system of theology, so profoundly unphilosophical, so utterly repugnant to the moral sentiments of mankind, can never fulfil the sublime mission of true religion on earth. It may possess the principle of life within, but it is destitute of the form of life without. It may convert the individual soul, and lead it up to heaven; ...
— A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory • Albert Taylor Bledsoe
... case of most disagreeable recollections I can succeed, in time, in consigning them to oblivion, but the slaving scenes come back unbidden, and make me start up at dead of night horrified by their vividness. To some this may appear weak and unphilosophical, since it is alleged that the whole human race has passed through the process of development. We may compare cannibalism to the stone age, and the times of slavery to the iron and bronze epochs—slavery is as natural a step in human development ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone
... perfection, is, in other words, to arraign supreme wisdom; and the paradoxical exclamation, that God has made all things right, and that evil has been introduced by the creature whom he formed, knowing what he formed, is as unphilosophical as impious. ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... subdue it and to fight the savages, all for love and zeal for his own tenets, instead of poaching upon the hard-earned soil of those who had laid down their all for what they deemed to be the truth. It seems to me unphilosophical in some of our historians to reflect, as they do, upon our forefathers for not being so totally indifferent to what they deemed error, as to allow it free course. Their strict, and, if you please, rigid ways, were the necessary defences of their principles, which were just taking root here. ...
— Bertha and Her Baptism • Nehemiah Adams
... visiting the dark purlieus of society and struggling to reclaim the myriads of badly-born human beings swarming there, is as hopeless as would be an attempt to ladle the ocean with a teaspoon; as unphilosophical as was the undertaking of the old American Colonization Society, which, with great labor and pains and money, redeemed from slavery and transported to Liberia annually 400 negroes; or the Fugitive Slave Societies, which ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... religious or (if you will) superstitious—such people as the Irish—are weak, unpractical, and behind the times. I only mention these ideas to affirm the same thing: that when I looked into them independently I found, not that the conclusions were unphilosophical, but simply that the facts were not facts. Instead of looking at books and pictures about the New Testament I looked at the New Testament. There I found an account, not in the least of a person with his hair parted in the middle or his hands clasped in appeal, but of an extraordinary ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... However vague and unphilosophical these conjectures may appear, they serve, I think, to show that one's first impulse utterly to reject any theory whatever, implying a gradual acquirement of these instincts, which for ages have excited man's admiration, may at least be delayed. Once grant that ...
— The Foundations of the Origin of Species - Two Essays written in 1842 and 1844 • Charles Darwin
... and Thlaspi arvense. The heath mentioned by Saunders, in Turner's 'Travels', and which had been confounded with Calluna vulgaris, is an Andromeda, a fact of the greatest importance in the geography of Asiatic plants. If I have made use, in this work, of the unphilosophical expressions of European genera, 'European' special, 'growing wild in Asia', etc., it has been in consequence of the old botanical language, which, instead of the idea of a large dissemination, or, rather, of the coexistence ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt
... practical instincts of Europe, the pantheistic denial of one's own personality—a disbelief in one's own consciousness, the thought that there is no thinker—was bound to give way, as well as the irrational polytheism. Very unphilosophical may have been Lord Byron's attitude to the idealism of Berkeley: "When Bishop Berkeley said there was no matter, 'twas no matter what he said." But that represents the modern atmosphere which New India is breathing, and it ...
— New Ideas in India During the Nineteenth Century - A Study of Social, Political, and Religious Developments • John Morrison
... possessions, theological and material, to an article. Patriotic egoism attaches me to the one; personal egoism satisfies me in the other; and the calm selfishness with which Nature has blessed all her unphilosophical creatures, blinds me to the attractions—as to the faults—of things with which I have no concern, and saves me at once from the folly of contempt, and the discomfort of envy. I might have written, as accurately, "The discomfort of contempt"; for ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... it is a selfish, an ignoble system," said Constance. "You smile—well, I may be unphilosophical, I do not deny it. But, give me one hour of glory, rather than a life of luxurious indolence. Oh, would," added Constance, kindling as she spoke, "that you—you, Mr. Godolphin,—with an intellect so formed for high accomplishment—with all the weapons and energies ...
— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... circumstances similar to each other; and their consequent rivalship prevented any disproportionate refinement from appearing in any particular region. The principles of government, firmly rooted in the Feudal System, unsocial and unphilosophical as they were, laid the foundation of that balance of power which discourages the Cesars and Alexanders of modern ages from attempting the conquest ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... moral decisions were kept together by no other ties than the speculations of each individual respecting general utility. In any such process, we can see no provision for that uniformity of feeling required for the class of actions in which are concerned our moral decisions;—and I can see nothing unphilosophical in the belief, that the Creator has provided, in reference to these, a part or a process in our moral constitution, which is incapable of analysis,—but which proves, as Butler has termed it, "a rule of right within, to every man who ...
— The Philosophy of the Moral Feelings • John Abercrombie
... thinking. These products are too frequently dismissed as the fancies and babblings of ages in which real knowledge was not as yet a practicable achievement. Such an estimate is as unfair as it is unphilosophical. It disregards the part played by intuition, and it is blind to the germs of truth which were destined to ripen into noble fruit. Mother Earth, with air and sunshine, and starry heaven above, nurtured men's thoughts and souls as well ...
— Nature Mysticism • J. Edward Mercer
... Leben, by his Widow. That Herder was not usually troubled with any unphilosophical scepticism, or aversion to novelty, may be inferred from his patronising Dr. Gall's system of Phrenology, or 'Skull-doctrine' as they call it in Germany. But Gall had referred with acknowledgment and admiration to the Philosophie ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... in" for microscopy in the unphilosophical Victorian manner as his "hobby." A birthday present of a microscope had turned his mind to technical microscopy when he was eighteen, and a chance friendship with a Holborn microscope dealer had confirmed that bent. He had remarkably ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... peace. Surely it was better that we should have songs about ourselves—drinking or fighting, if you like—to keep up the spirits, to lighten the serious cares of life, and drown for a while the responsibility of looking after a whole population of poor, half-ignorant, unphilosophical creatures. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... a very unpoetical, if not unphilosophical, mode of viewing antiquities. Your philosophy is too literal for our imperfect vision. We cannot look directly into the nature of things; we can only catch glimpses of the mighty shadow in the camera obscura of transcendental intelligence. These six and eighteen are only words to which ...
— Crotchet Castle • Thomas Love Peacock
... progress cannot be denied in any possible definition of the word. For myself, I understand by progress the emergence of mind, and its increasing dominance over matter. Such categories are, no doubt, unphilosophical in the ultimate sense, but they are proximately convenient and significant. Now, if progress be thus defined, we can see for ourselves that life has truly advanced, not merely in terms of anatomical ...
— Woman and Womanhood - A Search for Principles • C. W. Saleeby
... confines of consciousness, of the Personality and Fatherhood of God. Her observations on this important subject are worthy of serious consideration, from those rationalists especially whose cold theories do not admit anything so "unphilosophical" as prayer. Yet we find in the book itself a want. The author—like nearly all writers from her point of view—ignores the power of miracle. Because physical impossibilities, or what seem such, have been so readily accepted as ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... generally the effects of a sudden impulse which reason is not permitted to restrain. As therefore we have already seen, that the desire of imitating is innate to the mind (if your Lordship will permit me to make use of an unphilosophical epithet) and as the first inhabitants of the world were employed in the culture of the field, and in surveying the scenery of external Nature, it is probable that the first rude draughts of Poetry were extemporary effusions, either descriptive of the scenes of pastoral life, or extolling the ...
— An Essay on the Lyric Poetry of the Ancients • John Ogilvie
... whether a man is just and gentle, or rude and unsociable; these are the signs which distinguish even in youth the philosophical nature from the unphilosophical. ...
— The Republic • Plato
... knees began to tremble. Controlling his voice as well as he could, he replied that he was going up to Jonesboro, the terminus of the railroad, to work for a gentleman at that place. He felt immensely relieved when the conductor pocketed the fare, picked up his lantern, and moved away. It was very unphilosophical and very absurd that a man who was only doing right should feel like a thief, shrink from the sight of other people, and lie instinctively. Fine distinctions were not in uncle Wellington's line, but he ...
— The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and - Selected Essays • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... the more because it was an unnatural way, and therefore thought to be a philosophical one. Almost the first idea of a child, or of a simple person looking at anything, is, that it is a red, or a black, or a green, or a white thing. Nay, say the artists; that is an unphilosophical and barbarous view of the matter. Red and white are mere vulgar appearances; look farther into the matter, and you will see such and such wonderful other appearances. Abstract those, they are the heroic, epic, ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... unphilosophical methods of dealing with prophecy, we turn to the testimony of the inspired book itself. The book of Isaiah is distinguished by a phraseology peculiar to this prophet. He speaks of God as "The Holy ...
— The Testimony of the Bible Concerning the Assumptions of Destructive Criticism • S. E. Wishard
... earnest desire, especially if frequently repeated, to create an active elemental which ever presses forcefully in the direction of its own fulfilment, is the scientific explanation of what devout but unphilosophical people describe as answers to prayer. There are occasions, though at present these are rare, when the Karma of the person so praying is such as to permit of assistance being directly rendered to him by an Adept or his pupil, and there is also the still rarer possibility ...
— The Astral Plane - Its Scenery, Inhabitants and Phenomena • C. W. Leadbeater
... extraordinary, but this absolutely unphilosophical, and really paradoxical emotion, found an appreciator in the German philosopher Ludwig Feuerbach, the enemy of Christianity. In his Essence of Christianity, as well as in his treatise On the Cult of Mary, ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka
... of passing teams, dispersed in a grimy shower upon the recumbent man. The sun sank lower and lower; and still Sandy stirred not. And then the repose of this philosopher was disturbed, as other philosophers have been, by the intrusion of an unphilosophical sex. ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... [A very unphilosophical application of the above remarks was made by a young fellow, answering to the name of John, who sits near me at table. A certain basket of peaches, a rare vegetable, little known to boarding-houses, was on its way to me vi this unlettered Johannes. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... that his heart should be buried beneath the sun-dial of his garden, at Moor Park, near Farnham, in Surrey. In accordance with which, it was deposited there in a silver box, affording another instance of the ruling passion unweakened even in death. Nor was this an unphilosophical clinging to that which it was impossible to retain; but rather that grateful feeling, common to our nature, of desiring finally to repose where in life we have been happy. In his garden, Sir William Temple had spent the calmest hours of a well-spent life, and where his ...
— On the Portraits of English Authors on Gardening, • Samuel Felton
... despotism, more cautious in its policy, more methodic in its use of means to ends, which ended by metamorphosing the Italian cities and preparing the great age of the Renaissance. It would be sentimental to utter lamentations over this change, and unphilosophical to deplore the diminution of republican liberty as an unmixed evil. The divisions of Italy and the weakness of both Papacy and Empire left no other solution of the political problem. All branches of the municipal ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... civilization, so as to account, on natural principles, for the origin and prevalence of the various forms of Religion, and even for the introduction, in its appointed season, of Christianity itself, without having recourse to anything so utterly unphilosophical as the idea of a Divine Revelation, or the supposition of supernatural agency. And it has been applied, fourthly, to explain the order, and to vindicate the use, of those additions both to the doctrines and rites of primitive Christianity, which ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan |
