"Rational" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... remorse. Not so with Ben-Hur; his spirit had its emotions from the teachings of the first lawgiver, not the last and greatest one. He had dealt punishment, not wrong, to Messala. By permission of the Lord, he had triumphed; and he derived faith from the circumstance—faith the source of all rational ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... say. The writer of the Daily News article is of opinion that skirts will always be worn as distinctive of the sex, and it is obvious that men's dress, in its present condition, is not by any means an example of a perfectly rational costume. It is more than probable, however, that the dress of the twentieth century will emphasise distinctions of occupation, not ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... Sam, using a phrase which presumably has a rational meaning, as it is so often employed by reasonable people. "It doesn't pay to be squeamish. The squeamish men don't make good soldiers. I've seen enough to learn that. They hesitate to obey orders, if ...
— Captain Jinks, Hero • Ernest Crosby
... been able to see either, how we are really to copy the steward. Our Lord says, that we are to copy him by making ourselves friends of the Mammon of unrighteousness: but how? By giving away a few alms, or a great many? Does any rational man seriously believe, that if his Mammon was unrighteous, that is, if his wealth were ill-gotten, he would save his soul, and be received into eternal life, for giving away part of it, or ...
— Town and Country Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... taking hold of many families about them. From many centers the call reaches us for the organization of Congregational churches, churches which shall stand for morality, equal membership rights and a more rational type of piety. At the same time there is an uprising in various churches against the centralized forms of church government, which they feel to be oppressive. They refuse longer to be bound to systems which, as they believe, invade individual Christian rights. From these ...
— The American Missionary - Volume 49, No. 5, May 1895 • Various
... he said. 'We're all in such a state now that we'd believe anything. For pity's sake let's try to be rational.' ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling
... against Christianity. It is a more or less intelligible whole, and succeeds better than most religions in combining two great appeals. It appeals to the philosopher and the thoughtful man as a fairly complete and rational system of thought, which speculative and enlightened minds in any age might believe without disgrace. I do not mean that it is probably true; to me all these overpowering optimisms which, by means of a few untested a priori postulates, affect triumphantly to disprove ...
— Five Stages of Greek Religion • Gilbert Murray
... shopkeeping class descending to the rank of the operatives. It must be so. Withdraw the custom of 7,000,000 pounds per annum, which has ceased to be paid in wages, from the shopkeepers, and the consequence must present itself to any rational mind. We have then another class—the young men of superior education employed in warehouses and counting-houses. A great number of these will rapidly sink to the condition in which you find the operative classes. ...
— Home-Life of the Lancashire Factory Folk during the Cotton Famine • Edwin Waugh
... reasonable!—I think I'll go to church once a day often. I fancy it will go a great way towards making me a reformed man. To see multitudes of well-appearing people all joining in one reverend act. An exercise how worthy of a rational being! Yet it adds a sting or two to my former stings, when I think of my projects with regard to this charming creature. In my conscience, I believe, if I were to go constantly to church, I could not ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... criticisms, we must bear in mind the internecine ferocity of party-strife at this period, and the discords to which a city divided between a territorial aristocracy and a commercial bourgeoisie was perpetually exposed. If anything could make the Ordinanze della Giustizia appear rational, it would be a cool perusal of the Chronicle of Matarazzo, which sets forth the wretched state of Perugia owing to the feuds of its patrician houses, the Oddi and the Baglioni.[5] Peace for the republic was not, however, secured by these strong measures. The factions of the Neri and Bianchi ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... not unhappy. As she grew up, and became a more equal and rational companion to her parents, the cares and business of life necessarily occupied more of her time and thoughts, and gave her less leisure for solitary meditation; and her daily increasing sense of the duties and responsibilities ...
— The Pilgrims of New England - A Tale Of The Early American Settlers • Mrs. J. B. Webb
... legislative judgment, nor to carry that judgment into faithful execution. The prudence and temperance of your discussions will promote within your own walls that conciliation which so much befriends rational conclusion, and by its example will encourage among our constituents that progress of opinion which is tending to unite them in object and in will. That all should be satisfied with any one order of things is not to be expected; but I indulge the pleasing persuasion ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 4) of Volume 1: Thomas Jefferson • Edited by James D. Richardson
... ye 'spend your money for that which is not bread'? There is no answer worthy of a rational soul, no answer that will stand either the light of conscience or the clearer light of the Day of Judgment. I come to you now, and although my poor words may be but like the barley bread and the two fishes—nothing amongst all this gathered audience—I come with Christ in my hands, and ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... between the Upper and Lower cities is remarkable; those accustomed to live in the Lower city have a disposition to spring from their feet when first arriving in the Upper city. I recollect a lady—rather weakly—who seemed mad, but was rational enough; only she could not for some time resist ...
— Another World - Fragments from the Star City of Montalluyah • Benjamin Lumley (AKA Hermes)
... co-eds, and she began to learn fencing from the Commandant of the University Battalion. He had been a crack with the foils at West Point, and never ceased trying to arouse an interest in what seemed to him the only rational form of exercise; but fencing at that time had no intercollegiate vogue, and of all the young men and women at the State University, Sylvia alone took up his standing offer of free instruction to any one who ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... into brilliancy. How is a change so rapid in the lustre of a star to be accounted for? In a few days its brightness had undergone an extraordinary increase. Of course, this does not tell us for certain that the star lay in the glowing gas; but the most rational explanation that I have heard offered of this occurrence is that due, I believe, to my friend Mr. Monck. He has suggested that the sudden outbreak in brilliancy might be accounted for on the same principles as those by which we explain the ignition of meteors in our atmosphere. ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various
... to the above conclusion. He was a bit of a schemer—liked to play puppets. At present, his niece and friend were the largest and finest puppets he had on hand; the day he should bring them to a mutual, rational understanding, the puppet-strings would fall from his hands and the puppets turn independent agents. He represented to Talboys that Lucy was young and very innocent in some respects; that marriage did not seem to run in her head as in ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... are necessity for rest, increased difficulty of subject-matter, loss of interest and insufficient preparation. In trying to eliminate the plateau, our remedy should be adapted to the cause. In recognition of the fact that learning proceeds irregularly, we see that it is rational to expect the amount of effort to be exerted throughout a period of learning, to vary. It will vary partly with the difficulty of subject-matter and partly with fluctuations in bodily and mental efficiency which are bound to occur from day to day. Since this irregularity is ...
— How to Use Your Mind • Harry D. Kitson
... no more;—but of these mysteries anon. I rejoice to see you looking life-like and rational. The film of the shadow has already passed from off your eyes. Be of heart, and fear nothing. Your allotted days of stupor have expired, and to-morrow I will myself induct you into the full joys and ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... history of mankind, and of the sciences they have cultivated. Those who have connected a great class of ideas of resemblances, possess the source of the ornaments of poetry and oratory, and of all rational analogy. While those who have connected great classes of ideas of causation, are furnished with the powers of producing effects. These are the men of active wisdom who lead armies to victory, and kingdoms to prosperity; or discover and improve the sciences which meliorate and adorn ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... openings that the sun and air can enter in quantity, was the only thing that was capable of giving the solution sought. So it has been said, and rightly, that the Central Markets are, as regards the distribution and rational use of materials, the most beautiful of the structures of modern Paris. This system of construction at once met with great success, and the old markets are everywhere gradually disappearing, in order to give place to the new ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 488, May 9, 1885 • Various
... and you are my pet, and I want to bring you two together. I want to have my share in the hero; and still to keep a share in my pet. Is not that rational?" ...
— The Landleaguers • Anthony Trollope
... schooner, and with a goodly company take a trip to the West Indies, sail around and among these islands, visit places of interest, accept the hospitality of the planters, which is always freely bestowed, and thus secure a fund of rational enjoyment, gratify a laudable curiosity in relation to the manners and habits of the people of the torrid zone, and bring away a multitude of agreeable impressions on their minds, which will keep vivid and fresh the ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... publications on Natural Selection by his father and Alfred Russel Wallace. In this address we find the theory of Hering, Butler, Rignano, and Semon taking its proper place as a vera causa of that variation which Natural Selection must find before it can act, and recognised as the basis of a rational theory of the development of the individual and of the race. The organism is essentially purposive: the impossibility of devising any adequate accounts of organic form and function without taking account of the psychical ...
— Unconscious Memory • Samuel Butler
... he had invited several guests, a gentleman opposite him inadvertently spoke the fatal words, when, without a word of warning, he sprang at him across the table, using the carving-knife with all the fury of the most violent maniac; and yet, under all other conditions, he was perfectly rational." ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy
... moreover, to look at earrings which she could not possibly wear out of her bedroom could hardly be a satisfaction, the essence of vanity being a reference to the impressions produced on others; you will never understand women's natures if you are so excessively rational. Try rather to divest yourself of all your rational prejudices, as much as if you were studying the psychology of a canary-bird, and only watch the movements of this pretty round creature as she turns her head on one side ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... can I do, a lame old man, than sing hymns to God? If then I were a nightingale I would do the part of a nightingale: if I were a swan, I would do like a swan. But now I am a rational creature and I ought to praise God; this is my work, I do it, nor will I desert this post so long as I am allowed to keep it; and I exhort you to join ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... appearance, I recognise much of real religious feeling, much of honest and true principle, much of straightforward ignorant common sense. In Oxford there was genuine feeling too; but there had been a smouldering stern energetic animosity, not at all unnatural, partly rational, against its author. A false step had been made; now was the time for action. I am told that, even before the publication of the Tract, rumours of its contents had got into the hostile camp in an exaggerated form; and ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman
... Scotists centred round the question of the freedom of the will. The followers of St. Thomas maintained that although the will is to some extent subordinate to the reason, yet it is free to determine its own course of action after a process of rational comparison, by contrast with the animals which act on the impulse of the moment. The Scotists, on the other hand, taught that what is called the will is merely a name for the possibility of determining without motive in either of two opposite directions. ...
— The Church and the Empire - Being an Outline of the History of the Church - from A.D. 1003 to A.D. 1304 • D. J. Medley
... a full and fair one. But, in national business, there is an additional reason for a previous production of every account. It is a cheek, perhaps the only one, upon a corrupt and prodigal use of public money. An account after payment is to no rational purpose an account. However, the House of Commons thought all these to be antiquated principles; they were of opinion that the most Parliamentary way of proceeding was, to pay first what the Court thought proper to demand, and to ...
— Thoughts on the Present Discontents - and Speeches • Edmund Burke
... dialectical victories. This desire more properly marked the Scholastic doctors of the universities in a subsequent age, when, though philosophy had been invoked by Anselm to support theology, they virtually made theology subordinate to philosophy. It was his main effort to establish, on rational grounds, the existence of God, and afterwards the doctrines of the Trinity and the Incarnation. And yet with Anselm and Roscelin the Scholastic age began. They were the founders of the Realists and the Nominalists,—those two schools which divided the Church in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume V • John Lord
... A more rational hygienic measure for the relief of itching and smarting about the vaginal orifice consists in removing the secretion as soon as it appears. In other words, the external parts should be kept clean and dry. Great comfort is often derived ...
— The Prospective Mother - A Handbook for Women During Pregnancy • J. Morris Slemons
... the marsupials as a family, viewed in the dry light of modern science? Well, they are simply one of the very oldest mammalian families, and therefore, I need hardly say, in the levelling and topsy-turvy view of evolutionary biology, the least entitled to consideration or respect from rational observers. For of course in the kingdom of science the last shall be first, and the first last; it is the oldest families that are accounted the worst, while the best families mean always the newest. Now, the earliest mammals to appear on earth were creatures of distinctly marsupial ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... had been built between it and Philosophy, behind which each could go her own way without troubling the other. But what are they doing now? They are tearing down this wall, and, under the pretext of making us rational Christians, are making us very irrational philosophers.... We are agreed that our old religious system is false; but I cannot say with you that it is a patchwork of bunglers and half-philosophers. I know ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... Similar phenomena are by no means rare in the annals of history; eighteenth-century atheism, however, is of especial interest, standing as it does at the end of a long period of theological and ecclesiastical disintegration and prophesying a reconstruction of society on a purely rational and naturalistic basis. The anti-theistic movement has been so obscured by the less thoroughgoing tendency of deism and by subsequent romanticism that the real issue in the eighteenth century has been largely lost from view. Hence ...
— Baron d'Holbach • Max Pearson Cushing
... speckled necktie, and cuffs of which he was inordinately proud, and which he insisted on "flashing" every second minute. He was also evidently self-satisfied; which was odd, for I have seldom seen anyone who afforded less cause for rational satisfaction. "Hullo," he said, when I told him my name. "So it's you, is it, Cumberledge?" He glanced at my card. "St. Nathaniel's Hospital! What rot! Why, blow me tight if you haven't ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... emotional processes which here take control of the will and of the decision are perfectly clear and simple, and the mental analysis offers not the least difficulty. The fundamental instincts of man on the background of modern economic conditions must lead to such rational and recommendable behaviour. A psychological problem appears only when such a course of wisdom is abandoned, and either the savings are hidden away instead of being made productive, or are thrown away in wildcat schemes. Yet of the two extremes the first again is easily ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... down for the prevention of these diseases are rational enough, at least some of them, such as temperance, moderate bleeding (whether or not indicated we are not told,) the use of laxatives at seasonable times, when a friendly planet, opposite to the malignant planet you were born under, ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... medical experts in insanity who testified, on the evidence heard, that sufficient causes had occurred to produce an insane mind in the prisoner. Numerous cases were cited to sustain this opinion. There was such a thing as momentary insanity, in which the person, otherwise rational to all appearances, was for the time actually bereft of reason, and not responsible for his acts. The causes of this momentary possession could often be found in the person's life. [It afterwards came out that the chief expert for the ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... brokenly live on,"' quoted Lady Kirkbank. 'The disappointed young women don't all die. They take to district visiting, or rational dressing, or china painting, or an ambulance brigade. The lucky ones marry well-to-do widowers with large families, and so slip into a comfortable groove by the time they are five-and-thirty. Poor Belle is ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... never played—all this has nothing to do with it—it is true or false by his own measure. If we may be permitted to leave out two words, and add a few more, a sentence of Hegel appears to sum up this idea, "The universal need for expression in art lies in man's rational impulse to exalt the inner ... world (i.e., the highest ideals he sees in the inner life of others) together with what he finds in his own life—into a spiritual consciousness for himself." The artist does feel or does not feel that a sympathy has been approved by an artistic intuition and ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives
... G. Ascue [A distinguished naval officer before and after the Restoration; but he never went to sea subsequently to the action in 1666, when he was taken prisoner.] and Sir William Petty, who in discourse is, methinks, one of the most rational men that ever I heard speak with a tongue, having all his notions the most distinct and clear. To Covent Garden, to buy a maske at the French House, Madam Charett's, for my wife; in the way observing the street full of coaches at the new play, at "The Indian Queene;" ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... disciplined brain can accomplish them. And my brain is disciplined, and I will discipline it more and more as the days pass. I am, therefore, independent of hazard, and I will back myself to conduct all intercourse as becomes a rational creature.' ... I can say this. I can ram this argument by force of will into my brain, and by dint of repeating it often enough I shall assuredly arrive at the supreme virtues of reason. I should assuredly ...
— The Human Machine • E. Arnold Bennett
... good security. It is a little present to you from your more than betrothed. He will, I think, Elfride, feel now that my pretensions to your hand are anything but the dream of a silly boy not worth rational consideration.' ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... necessity, the fundamental food, the universally essential and normal satisfaction of the natural hunger and the human thirst. Let us, of all things, hold fast to the naturalness, simplicity, and wholesomeness of the religious life. Religion is not a luxury added to the normal life; it is the {31} rational attitude of the soul in its relation to the universe of God. It is not an accident that the central sacrament of the Christian life is the sacrament of daily food and drink. This do, says the Master, so oft as ye eat and drink ...
— Mornings in the College Chapel - Short Addresses to Young Men on Personal Religion • Francis Greenwood Peabody
... as his wife. And so he must give her up. For he believed that, in him, the instinct of moral law had been too carefully developed ever to be deliberately ignored; he still believed marriage to be not only a rational social procedure, not only a human compromise and a divine convention, but the only possible sanctuary where love might dwell, and remain, and ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... texts over the purely religious ones consists in their being dated, either accurately or approximately. For this reason, the former must be made the basis for a rational theory of the development of the Babylonian pantheon through the various periods above instanced. The data furnished by the religious texts can be introduced only, as they accord with the facts revealed by the ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow
... full in the face of the half dozen most obvious facts which seem to contradict it, I would think only in single file from this day forward. A rash man, once visiting a certain noted institution at South Boston, ventured to express the sentiment, that man is a rational being. An old woman who was an attendant in the Idiot School contradicted the statement, and appealed to the facts before the speaker to disprove it. The rash man stuck to ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... SONGS, SCRAPS OF POETRY, &c., by ROBERT BURNESS: a man who had little art in making money, and still less in keeping it; but was, however, a man of some sense, a great deal of honesty, and unbounded good-will to every creature, rational and irrational.—As he was but little indebted to scholastic education, and bred at a plough-tail, his performances must be strongly tinctured with his unpolished, rustic way of life; but as I believe they are really his own, it may be some entertainment to a curious observer of human nature to ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... narrow, vindictive; but it has also shown itself earnest and constructive. The conservative trades union, at the hour of this writing, stands as a bulwark between that amorphous, inefficient, irresponsible Socialism which has made Russia a lurid warning and Prussia a word of scorn, and that rational social ideal which is founded upon the conviction that society is ultimately an organic spiritual unity, the blending of a thousand diverse interests whose justly combined labors and harmonized talents ...
— The Armies of Labor - Volume 40 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Samuel P. Orth
... merited approbation of the man she loves. As a mother, we find her the affectionate, the ardent instructress of the children she has reared from infancy, and trained them up to thought and virtue, to meditation and benevolence; addressing them as rational beings, and preparing them to become men and women in ...
— Life & Times of Col. Daniel Boone • Cecil B. Harley
... of moisture, and animals being generated therein, the deity above-mentioned[1] took off his own head: upon which the other gods mixed the blood, as it gushed out, with the earth; and from whence were formed men. On this account it is that they are rational and partake ...
— The Babylonian Legends of the Creation • British Museum
... force than he had been able to gather for the defence of New York, having now one 74, seven 64's, and five 50's, in all thirteen of the line, besides several smaller vessels; but he still was greatly inferior to opponent, by any rational mode ...
— The Major Operations of the Navies in the War of American Independence • A. T. Mahan
... and stood round watching them in a ring for a long time, but to a rational, common-sense, shrewd, unimaginative set of people like the Fans, just standing hour after hour gazing on a dance you do not understand, and which consists of a wriggle and a stamp, a wriggle and a stamp, in a solemn walk, or prance, round and round, ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... for days and weeks. And when I became somewhat rational, and could understand what was passing about me, I learned the terrible truth—the sad, pitiful story: my babe had indeed found a watery grave. They found a little shoe, its cape, and portions of its dress floating on the waves the next morning. But the body ...
— Pretty Madcap Dorothy - How She Won a Lover • Laura Jean Libbey
... who went to execute the orders, casting all the while looks behind him, to see if the bishop of Vannes were not deceived; and if, on recovering more rational ideas, he would not recall him. The alarm was sounded, trumpets brayed, drums rolled; the great bronze bell swung in horror from its lofty belfry. The dikes and moles were quickly filled with the curious and soldiers; matches sparkled ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... that her uncle had promised to support her till William was enabled, by promotion or prize-money, to do it himself. Now both these resources were cut off for ever; and, after mature deliberation she thought her grandmother's plan was the only rational thing she could do; she therefore, in her own mind, determined, as soon as she knew who was to be her father's ...
— The Eskdale Herd-boy • Mrs Blackford
... only is vibratory motion as a remedial agent rational and philosophical, but our experience has fully demonstrated its marvelous effects in the treatment of paralysis in its various forms, and also in the cure of other chronic diseases. We have cured cases of infantile paralysis which ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... northern or southern, an eastern or western, position, their various political opinions on unessential points or their personal attachments; if a love of virtuous men of all parties and denominations; if a love of science and letters and a wish to patronize every rational effort to encourage schools, colleges, universities, academies, and every institution for propagating knowledge, virtue, and religion among all classes of the people, not only for their benign influence on the happiness of life in all its stages ...
— United States Presidents' Inaugural Speeches - From Washington to George W. Bush • Various
... also endeavoured to explain most of his Observations, according to the Rules of the new Philosophy, which, as it is grounded upon. Experiments, so it generally speaking enables us to give a fair and rational Account of almost all the Phaenomena taken notice of by ...
— The Shepherd of Banbury's Rules to Judge of the Changes of the Weather, Grounded on Forty Years' Experience • John Claridge
... its most popular leaders. And yet we are still using the same method of election as our forefathers used six centuries ago. Although the conditions have entirely changed, we have not adapted the electoral machinery to the change. The system of single-membered electorates was rational in the fourteenth century, because there was only one party. Is it not on the face of it absurd to-day, when there ...
— Proportional Representation Applied To Party Government • T. R. Ashworth and H. P. C. Ashworth
... evil hour off, and trusting too much to chance and fortune.—In that state often they are overtaken sooner than they expected; their schemes are frustrated; their distress of body and mind deprives them of all judgment, and rational conduct; they are delivered by themselves, wherever they happened to retire in their fright and confusion; sometimes dying in the agonies of childbirth, and sometimes, being quite exhausted, they faint away, and become ...
— On the uncertainty of the signs of murder in the case of bastard children • William Hunter
... the recognition and acceptance of this rule of the game. If the will of the majority is not to be regarded as authoritative, measures for reform of the franchise, extension of the suffrage, and adjustment of the electoral machine have no rational meaning at all. They are merely vanity and vexation of spirit. What matter who makes the laws, or what laws are made, if laws are not to be implicitly obeyed? Our extremists want to have it both ways: they want ...
— Freedom In Service - Six Essays on Matters Concerning Britain's Safety and Good Government • Fossey John Cobb Hearnshaw
... convictions in the man to whom Jowett wrote, thirty years afterwards, that he was 'the most distinguished clergyman in the Church of England, who could do more than any one towards the great work of placing religion on a rational basis.'[9] ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... involved. This latter might apply with equal force to the average man; but man, less governed by emotions, will permit his sense of justice to prevail when not blinded by personal interest. Abstract justice will frequently appeal to him and he will act with rational regard for its proper application. To a woman's eyes, however, justice invariably shapes itself as her ...
— The Substitute Prisoner • Max Marcin
... end the controversy by returning to the condition of things before the controversy broke out, an entirely futile undertaking. The question having been raised had to be discussed and settled by rational processes. See Hefele, ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... principles, agricultural and mercantile establishments, calculated to instruct and civilize the Negroes employed in the necessary avocations, will unfold the fertility of their soil which is now left to nature; and will also fulfil the expectations of a rational humanity, while it might rapidly expel slavery and the Slatee trade, to the establishment of civilization, and more natural commerce. I have also endeavoured to demonstrate the eligibility of the position of the river Sierra Leone, from whence a controlling ...
— Observations Upon The Windward Coast Of Africa • Joseph Corry
... the vessel, and watched it for an hour after it had sailed, for it bore away a packet of papers, which I could not help imagining were to discover the secret which I was so eager in pursuit of. A night's sleep made me more rational, and I now resolved to ascertain where Sir Henry de Clare, or Melchior, as I felt certain he must be, was to be found. I sent for the waiter, and asked him if he could inform me. He immediately replied in the affirmative, and gave his address, Mount Castle, Connemara, asking me when I ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat
... without the annual Motion of the Earth, no rational Account can be given of any Comet, but that all is involved with ...
— Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666 • Various
... which comes in all vegetal bodies developed under sunlight, next deserves a place by itself, because it is one of the few organic bodies of which no rational analysis has ever been pretended. Though we can not state the constitution of this chlorophyl, we know that, except by turning acid in the stomach, it remains inert on the human system, as one might imagine would happen ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... for creative power. The morbid fancies and melancholy scorn of a Byron, for instance, such gentry reflect back from their foggy imaginations in exaggerated and distorted feebleness of whining versicles, and so on with other lights celestial or infernal. This, however, by the way. The only rational pursuit he ever followed, and that only by fits and starts, and to gratify his faculty of "wonder," I fancy, was chemistry. A small laboratory was fitted up for him in the little summer-house you may have observed at the further corner ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... would then deliver his message, and that message would be——" I drew my chair forward between them and laid a finger on the arm of each. "That message," said I, "would be just like this—and indeed it's very simple, and seems devoid of all rational meaning: Je viens." They started. "Tu viens." They gaped. "Il vient," I cried triumphantly, and their chairs shot back as they sprang to their feet, astonishment vivid on their faces. For me, I sat there laughing ...
— Simon Dale • Anthony Hope
... even during the war of 1812; but all this was only destined to exemplify the necessity for the warning given by Him who best understood human nature—"Cease ye from man, whose breath is in his nostrils." The friends of order, peace, and rational liberty believed the protestations of potentates, and used their influence, and armed on the side of governments in the conflicts of 1849. The result was, they unconsciously abetted a reaction by which the old ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... a gospel of despair, but of hope and high expectation. Out of many tribulations mankind has pressed steadily onward. The opportunity for a rational existence was never before so great. Blessings were never so bountiful. But the evidence was never so overwhelming as now that men and nations ...
— Have faith in Massachusetts; 2d ed. - A Collection of Speeches and Messages • Calvin Coolidge
... strength. It is to this poverty of the old stage that we owe, in part, the immense riches of the Shakespearian Drama, since it was thereby put to the necessity of making up for the defect of sensuous impression by working on the rational, moral, and imaginative forces of the audience. And, undoubtedly, the modern way of glutting the senses with a profusion of showy and varied dress and scenery has struck, as it must always strike, a dead palsy ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... course, he understood why: it didn't really exist in the space-time framework he was used to. Instead, it was partially a four-dimensional pseudo-manifold superimposed on normal space. If not perfectly simple, at least the explanation made matters rational rather than supernatural. But, at the time, everything seemed to take place in a chaotic dream world where infinite distance and the space next to him seemed one and the same. He knew then why Diana had told him that the word "machine" could not ...
— Pagan Passions • Gordon Randall Garrett
... lively and cheerful presage of our happy success and victory. For as in a body, when the blood is fresh, the spirits pure and vigorous, not only to vital but to rational faculties, and those in the acutest and the pertest operations of wit and subtlety, it argues in what good plight and constitution the body is; so when the cheerfulness of the people is so sprightly up, as that it has not only wherewith to guard well its own freedom and safety, but to spare, and ...
— Areopagitica - A Speech For The Liberty Of Unlicensed Printing To The - Parliament Of England • John Milton
... the spirited girl brought this craven-hearted dominie at once to his senses, and during the remainder of the evening he was more rational in conduct and discourse, seeing that Mary was the darling of her father, who would allow the parson to make no reflections on the motives that actuated her in the steps she was ...
— The Cross and the Shamrock • Hugh Quigley
... reciprocal outpouring of our minutest thoughts. On that condition only will existence here be tolerable to us both. And now as a proof that thou wilt assent to this proposal—than which nothing can be more rational—let our new life of mutual confidence date from this moment. Tell me then, my Fernand," she proceeded, assuming a winning manner, and throwing as much pathos as possible into her sweetly musical voice—that voice which gave new and indescribable, ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... hundred pounds per annum, all your expenses paid, except your dress. As far as salary goes, I think her terms liberal. And now, as to Lady R—. My opinion of her is in few words. You saw her yesterday, and I never knew her otherwise; never more or less rational. She is an oddity; but she is good-natured; and, I am told, more liberal and charitable than many others who can afford it better. Now you know all I can tell you about her, and you must decide for yourself. Here is her note; you need not give me an ...
— Valerie • Frederick Marryat
... manual-labor schools are now, in the public school systems of our States, getting to be the rule rather than the exception. Astonishing it is, also, to look back to the time, which I can remember, when, instead of the natural and rational method of coeducation of the sexes, now universal (with very few exceptions), it was a common thing for boys and girls, young men and young women, to be educated,—monastery and nunnery ...
— 1931: A Glance at the Twentieth Century • Henry Hartshorne
... nothing of what he had in his thought to say, when that very morning, before he came to me, I had, in a great deal of confusion of thought, and revolving every part of my circumstances in my mind, come to this resolution, that I would go to Lisbon, and consult with my old sea-captain; and if it was rational and practicable, I would go and see the island again, and what was become of my people there. I had pleased myself with the thoughts of peopling the place, and carrying inhabitants from hence, getting a patent ...
— The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... of them?" Malone felt the faint stirrings of hope. Perhaps they would turn up a telepath yet who was completely sane and rational. ...
— That Sweet Little Old Lady • Gordon Randall Garrett (AKA Mark Phillips)
... turning-point in my life, and Penn, whose little book of aphorisms had a brief but strong effect on me, and Mitford's Tales[21] of Old Japan, wherein I learned for the first time the proper attitude of any rational man to his country's laws—a secret found, and kept, in the Asiatic islands. That I should commemorate all is more than I can hope or the Editor could ask. It will be more to the point, after having said so much upon improving books, to say a word ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... was there any person of humanity at hand who could inculcate the indecency of this kind of extravagance, I am persuaded that they have hearts good enough to reject with disdain, the momentary pleasure of making a figure, in behalf of the rational and lasting delight of contributing by their forbearance to the happiness of ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various
... a balance between the extreme parties, resist all violent propositions, protect the King from insult and peremptory dictation, and afford the new Government a fair trial, and on the other hand declare at once and without reserve their determination to continue without interruption the course of rational and effectual reform, making a virtual abandonment of High Tory maxims and acquiescence in the desires of the country with respect to the correction of abuses the indispensable conditions of the present Government's retention ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... terror to me. But I went, and soon found the good effects of a change of scene. Instead of melancholy closets, and lonely avenues of trees, I saw lightsome rooms and cheerful faces; I had companions of my own age; no books were allowed me but what were rational or sprightly; that gave me mirth, or gave me instruction. I soon learned to laugh at witch stories; and when I returned after three or four months absence to our own house, my good aunt appeared to me in the same light in which I had viewed her from my infancy, before ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... this rational and common-sense view which I want to impress upon you to-night, to get you out of the region of mystery, marvel, wonder, and fear, which to so many people surround what is called psychism; to make ...
— London Lectures of 1907 • Annie Besant
... two mental phenomena. The first was an impression of motion in the trees, which, whimsical as it was, I had not the slightest power to dispel. I trembled from head to foot under the consciousness of this supernatural vitality. My rational faculties were as clear as ever they had been, and I understood perfectly that the semblance of motion was owing to two characteristics of the white-pine, namely,—that it follows the shores of the lakes in lines, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... feature of Heuschrecke himself. We are enabled to assert that he hung on the Professor with the fondness of a Boswell for his Johnson. And perhaps with the like return; for Teufelsdrockh treated his gaunt admirer with little outward regard, as some half-rational or altogether irrational friend, and at best loved him out of gratitude and by habit. On the other hand, it was curious to observe with what reverent kindness, and a sort of fatherly protection, our Hofrath, being the elder, ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... loose of a menagerie. Invincibly ignorant of all that was really inspiring in this first breath of freedom, they saw nothing in it but an unwarrantable attack on the authority of their amiable, if weak, old King, for whom they would gladly have shed every drop of their blood—not from the rational esteem which the people of Italy, like the people of England, now feel for their sovereign, but from the pure passion of loyalty which made the cavalier stand blindly by his prince, whether he was good or bad, in the right or in the wrong. Men of their type watched the evolution of Piedmont into ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... through Friedrich's influence at Paris, some small Appointment in the ECOLE MILITAIRE there. He is, of all the Frenchmen Friedrich had about him, with the exception of D'Argens alone, the most honest-hearted. The above Letter, lucid, innocent, modest, altogether rational and practical, is a fair specimen of D'Arget: add to it the prompt self-sacrifice (and in that fine silent way) at Jaromirz for Valori, and readers may conceive the man. He lived at Paris, in meagre but contented fashion, RUE DE L'ECOLE MILITAIRE, till 1778; and seems, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... resumes its natural state, and the tube is drawn, by little and little, up to the clouds, where it is dissipated. The same tube would sometimes have a vertical, and sometimes a crooked or inclined direction. The most rational account I have read of water-spouts, is in Mr Falconer's Marine Dictionary, which is chiefly collected from the philosophical writings of the ingenious Dr Franklin. I have been told that the firing of a gun will dissipate them; and I am very sorry ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World, Volume 1 • James Cook
... scraps by the way, just because nobody who had charge of me ever thought it worth while to teach, a girl. But I have a mind!—an intelligence!—even if I am a woman; and there is all the world to know. Marriage? Yes!—but not at the sacrifice of everything else—of the rational, civilised self." ...
— Delia Blanchflower • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... sentiment means a foolish scepticism towards the great things of life. There is none of the blood and bone left for honest belief. You hold your religion half-heartedly. Honest fanaticism is a thing intolerable to you. You are all mild, rational sentimentalists, and I would not give a ton of it for an ounce of good ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... she had important interviews impending with milliner and dressmaker prior to a visit to Lady Mary Vincent at Cowes, from which she expected the most brilliant results, for the little woman's social ambition grew with what it fed upon. Nor did the rational repose of Katherine's life suit her. Books, music, out-door existence, were a weariness, and in spite of her loudly declared affection for her sister-in-law she found a curious ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... strong positive convictions, which indeed, though changed in later years, continued to influence his mind. He was also persuaded that the Church of England, guarded by the decisions of lawyers, could be kept sufficiently open to admit the gradual infusion of rational belief. I must further remark that his belief, whatever may be thought of it, represented so powerful a sentiment that I must dwell for a little upon its general characteristics. For this reason I will ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... and try it—why dream about it!"—and at once he had broken down and had run away cursing, in a frenzy with himself. Meanwhile it would seem, as regards the moral question, that his analysis was complete; his casuistry had become keen as a razor, and he could not find rational objections in himself. But in the last resort he simply ceased to believe in himself, and doggedly, slavishly sought arguments in all directions, fumbling for them, as though someone were forcing ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... instances he has given his 'word' only, and demanded our 'faith'; while, on other momentous subjects, instead of bestowing a full revelation; like the 'Via Lactea', he has furnished a glimpse only, through either the medium of inspiration, or by the exercise of those rational faculties with which he has endowed us. I consider the Trinity as substantially resting on the first proposition, yet deriving ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... upon alchymy all claim Jacques Coeur as a member of their fraternity, and treat as false and libellous the more rational explanation of his wealth which the records of his trial afford. Pierre Borel, in his Antiquites Gauloises, maintains the opinion that Jacques was an honest man, and that he made his gold out of lead and copper by means of the philosopher's ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... subject, could speak as sensibly as any young person of his years. He needed relaxation, he used to say, though he never suffered it to interfere with his proper business; and where was there safer relaxation to be found than among innocent children? This, of course, was eminently rational, and even virtuous. And so, when his term of apprenticeship had expired, Francie was despatched, not without hope of success, to Newfoundland,—where he had relations extensively engaged in the fishing trade,—to serve as one of their clerks. He was ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... him, and one of the signs by which they came to the conclusion he was dying was this so sudden and complete return to his senses after having been mad; for to the words already quoted he added much more, so well exprest, so devout, and so rational, as to banish all doubt and convince them that he was sound of mind. The curate turned them all out, and, left alone with him, confest him. The bachelor went for the notary, and returned shortly afterward with him and with Sancho, who, ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VIII (of X) - Continental Europe II. • Various
... met Sir Antony MacDonnell in the House of Commons, and he asked 'What is your labourers' minimum?' I gave him a brief outline of the Macroom programme. 'No rational being could object,' he said, 'but what does it mean in hard cash?' I replied, 'Roughly, four millions.' And the great Irishman—'the worst enemy that ever came to Ireland' of Mr Dillon's nightmare hours—ended the interview with these laconic words: 'The thing ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan
... and strength of your devotion that I fear. You will love him too well for your own peace,—too well for his good. Far better is a rational, steadfast attachment, that neither rises above the worth of the object, nor sinks below it, than the two great extremes, idolatry and indifference. The first is a violation of the commands of God,—the last, of the rights of man. Remember, my child, that ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... outlive the Gothic cottage. Even the Anglo-Italian bracketed villa has seen its palmiest days apparently, and exhausted most of its variations. We are in an extremely chaotic state just now; but there seems to be an inclination towards more rational ways, at least in the plans and general arrangement ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... achieve the protection, scientific study, and rational use of Antarctic seals, and to maintain a satisfactory balance within the ecological system ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... the impulse seeming to him most rational. Avoid these strangers about whom he knows nothing; confide first in his friends; with them and the police search for the body ...
— Oswald Langdon - or, Pierre and Paul Lanier. A Romance of 1894-1898 • Carson Jay Lee
... persuaded with impunity that the millennium has come, for they will want to enjoy it immediately, and will tolerate no deception practiced on their expectations. In this violent state, fired by boundless expectations, all their whims appear reasonable and all their opinions rational. They are no longer able to find faults with or control themselves. In their brain, overflowing with emotions and enthusiasm, there is no room but for one intense, absorbing, fixed idea. Each is confident and over-confident in his own opinion; all become impassioned, imperious, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine |
