"Sceptic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... state of mind when he came to Milan. He was a sceptic, the kind of sceptic who regards as useless all speculation upon the origin of things, and for whom cognition is but an approximation of the true. Vaguely deist, he saw in Jesus Christ only a wise man among the wise. He believed in God and the providences ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... as friends of the Allens, and not knowing their devilish tendencies. God had, however, he hoped, mercifully protected him. If it had not been for God's grace, where might he not have been that day? It was true that they were disciples of the French sceptic; his likeness was on the walls; his books were on the bookshelves! Mr. George Allen had been in the habit of associating not only with Mr. Coleman, but with the daughter, and with the daughter ALONE! as has already been stated. She was also an infidel—more ...
— The Revolution in Tanner's Lane • Mark Rutherford
... The facts therein stated seem to contradict all the known laws of physiology. The lower side of miracles, namely, their apparent violation of physical laws, here appears as fully developed and as fully attested as the most careful sceptic could desire. If, therefore, any one objects to believing the miracles of Jesus on the ground that they seem to be violations of physical laws, we ask what they mean to do with these facts, so extraordinary, and yet so fully attested. If believed, there is no reason, ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... observation, have served directly or indirectly religious and social interests, and hence they have been protected by force against the criticisms of persons who have the inconvenient habit of using their reason. Nobody minds if his neighbour disbelieves a demonstrable fact. If a sceptic denies that Napoleon existed, or that water is composed of oxygen and hydrogen, he causes amusement or ridicule. But if he denies doctrines which cannot be demonstrated, such as the existence of a personal God or the immortality of ...
— A History of Freedom of Thought • John Bagnell Bury
... own aristocracy—the noblest of all ages. But that peril was averted, and the further history of the case was this: By the year 1820, much discussion having passed to and fro, serious doubts had arisen in many quarters: scepticism had begun to arm itself against the sceptic: the economist of 1800 was no longer quite sure of his ground. He was now suspected of being fallible; and, what seemed of worse augury, he was beginning himself to suspect as much. To one capital blunder he was obliged publicly to plead guilty. What it was, we shall have occasion ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various
... threatening dispositions toward the whole establishment. "Burnee, burnee," to the house, as well as "burnee, burnee," to the baby. And so also as to lamps and candles—that they would "burnee" too, was placed, painfully, beyond the impertinent reach of a doubt in minds of the most sceptic order. Mathew Mizzle can show you the evidences to this day, scored, as it were, upon the living parchment, and engrossed in characters not to be misunderstood upon the cuticular ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various
... that this spot was really the centre of the earth, a sceptic once paid well for the privilege of ascending to the dome of the church to see if the sun gave him a shadow at noon. He came down perfectly convinced. The day was very cloudy and the sun threw no shadows at all; but the man was satisfied that if the sun had come out and made shadows it ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... how Pentaur's life contradicted the belief in a just and beneficent ordering of the destinies of men; and the more he and the poet were oppressed, the more bitter was the irony, often amounting to extravagance, with which the mocking sceptic ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... doubtful whether the gift was innate. For my own part, I think it came to him suddenly. Indeed, until he was thirty he was a sceptic, and did not believe in miraculous powers. And here, since it is the most convenient place, I must mention that he was a little man, and had eyes of a hot brown, very erect red hair, a moustache with ends that ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... didn't join the Theosophists and kiss Buddha's big toe, did you? I tried to get into their set once, but they cast me out for a sceptic without a chance of improving my poor ...
— Under the Deodars • Rudyard Kipling
... is increased till it has generated a toleration, if not a partiality of licentiousness and immorality. Infidelity (a sin unknown to our forefathers) has lately appeared among us, not like a solitary, restless sceptic, affecting a wish for conviction, nor in the bashful form of an untried novelty, cautiously stealing upon public favour—but under the licence long allowed to opinions however blasphemous or immoral, a party has arisen, calling themselves free-thinkers, who not only deride every ecclesiastical ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... misappreciation and discouragement of its age; and nowhere do they crop out in a more striking manner than in Montaigne. At the beginning of the sixteenth century, Rabelais is a satirist and a cynic, he is no sceptic; there is felt circulating through his book a glowing sap of confidence and hope; fifty years later, Montaigne, on the contrary, expresses, in spite of his happy nature, in vivid, picturesque, exuberant language, only the lassitude of an antiquated ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... glowing hearts and thoroughly convinced minds, there was one sceptic. How came he there? By juxtaposition. This sceptic's name was Grantaire, and he was in the habit of signing himself with this rebus: R. Grantaire was a man who took good care not to believe in anything. Moreover, he was one of the students who ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... always thinking of ghosts and spirits—they wouldn't do harm to you or any of us," remarked another fellow who was looked upon as the chief sceptic of the crew, though it is difficult to say what they did or did not believe, for considering their lives it might be supposed that they were ...
— Dick Cheveley - His Adventures and Misadventures • W. H. G. Kingston
... "Night Thoughts," with more quaintness than good taste, compares the sceptic who can remain unmoved in the contemplation of the starry heavens to a salamander unwarmed in ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... replied Panky, "is a very dangerous woman; see how she stood out about the way in which the Sunchild had worn his clothes before they gave him the then Erewhonian dress. Besides, she is a sceptic at heart, and so is that precious son ...
— Erewhon Revisited • Samuel Butler
... of some distant country, at a remote period, we could not have told what peculiar circumstances there might have been to render probable what seems to us most strange; and yet in that case every philosophical sceptic, every free-thinking speculator, would instantly have rejected such a history, as utterly unworthy of credit. What, for instance, would the great Hume, or any of the philosophers of his school, have said, if they had found in the antique ...
— Historic Doubts Relative To Napoleon Buonaparte • Richard Whately
... Wordsworth does. And though I cannot follow him in his veneration for the Thirty-nine Articles, the way in which he does makes me half wish I could. . . . It was full of wisdom and the beauty of holiness, which even I, poor sceptic and outcast, could recognise and appreciate. After all, he didn't get it from the Articles, but from his own human heart, which, he told us, was deceitful and ...
— Robert F. Murray - his poems with a memoir by Andrew Lang • Robert F. Murray
... is a terrible sceptic," said he; "I hope, Miss Penclosa, that you will be able to ...
— The Parasite • Arthur Conan Doyle
... snare to our own aristocracy—the noblest of all ages. But that peril was averted, and the further history of the case was this: By the year 1820, much discussion having passed to and fro, serious doubts had arisen in many quarters; scepticism had begun to arm itself against the sceptic; the economist of 1800 was no longer quite sure of his ground. He was now suspected of being fallible; and what seemed of worse augury, he was beginning himself to suspect as much. To one capital blunder ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... excitement had a wonderful effect on a Russian friend who accompanied me. When in his normal condition that gentleman was a quiet, undemonstrative person, devoted to science, an ardent adherent of Western civilisation in general and of Darwinism in particular, and a thorough sceptic with regard to all forms of religious belief; but the influence of the surroundings was too much for his philosophical equanimity. For a moment his orthodox Muscovite soul awoke from its sceptical, cosmopolitan ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... not now speaking of those who pretend to cure disease—are sometimes successful in their legerdemain, to a degree, which almost makes a convert of the sceptic. The following story is related ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 2 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... the schools Who measure heavenly things by rules, The sceptic, doubter, the logician, Who in all sacred things precision, Would mark the limit, fix the scope, "Art thou the Christ for whom we hope? Art thou a magian, or in thee Has the divine eye power to see?" He answered low to those who came, "Not this, nor this, nor this I claim. More than ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell
... Mr. Moore sent to the press "Corruption and Intolerance;" two poems, with notes: addressed to an Englishman, by an Irishman; and in 1809, "The Sceptic," a philosophical satire. These works, of which the first is pungently satirical, are little known; but they are worthy of their author. They were succeeded in 1810, by "A Letter to the Roman Catholics of Dublin." His next production, "Intercepted Letters, or the Two-penny Post ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 12, No. 349, Supplement to Volume 12. • Various
... affix these labels could think of no more contemptuous name, and could not suppose the most audacious soul capable of advancing even under the leadership of Satan himself beyond a stray doubt or so. He had perhaps as little of the sceptic in his constitution as Bossuet or Butler, and was much less capable of becoming one than De Maistre or Paley. This was a prime secret of his power, for the mere critic and propounder of unanswered doubts ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... the public he asks just sufficient to secure his independence, and then declines to do anything more. Indolent and prolific as Rossini, compelled, like great poet-comedians, like Moliere and Rabelais, to see both sides of everything, and all that is to be said both for and against, he is a sceptic, ready to laugh at all things. Fulgence Ridal is a great practical philosopher. His worldly wisdom, his genius for observation, his contempt for fame ("fuss," as he calls it) have not seared a kind heart. He is as energetic on behalf of another as he is careless where his own interests ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... deceived: great intellects are sceptical. Zarathustra is a sceptic. The strength, the freedom which proceed from intellectual power, from a superabundance of intellectual power, manifest themselves as scepticism. Men of fixed convictions do not count when it comes to determining what is fundamental in values ...
— The Antichrist • F. W. Nietzsche
... nineteenth century was nearly half-way through. Thus his life exactly spans the interval between the old world and the new. His family, which belonged to the magistracy of Grenoble, preserved the living tradition of the eighteenth century. His grandfather was a polite, amiable, periwigged sceptic after the manner of Fontenelle, who always spoke of 'M. de Voltaire' with a smile 'melange de respect et d'affection'; and when the Terror came, two representatives of the people were sent down to Grenoble, with the result that Beyle's father ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... was at last executed; if I myself saw them, one after another, consenting to be racked, burnt, or strangled, rather than live up the truth of their account;—still if Mr. Hume's rule be my guide, I am not to believe them. Now I undertake to say that there exists not a sceptic in the world who would not believe them, or who ...
— Evidences of Christianity • William Paley
... preface his work with some sort of philosophic theory because the conditions of the age demanded it. The one source of enlightenment when he wrote was Hume; but for some uncertain reason, perhaps his piety, Blackstone makes no reference to the great sceptic's speculations. So that he was driven back upon notions he felt to be false, without a proper realization of their falsity. His use of Montesquieu shows rather how dangerous a weapon a great idea can be in the hands of one incompetent to understand it, than ...
— Political Thought in England from Locke to Bentham • Harold J. Laski
... part of the war, I was a doubter of nobility in others and a sceptic as regards myself. The growth of my personal vision was complete when I recognised that the capacity of heroism is latent in everybody, and only awaits the bigness of the opportunity to call ...
— The Glory of the Trenches • Coningsby Dawson
... voice as if struck for the first time by the coincidence. "It is the photograph of that apparition which I have seen. Very sweet. Most interesting. A little cloudy naturally. . . . Mr. Renouard! I hope you are not a sceptic. It's so consoling ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... boldly to express his disbelief of a Supreme Deity, and state that he could not credit the existence of a Being, whose power was said to extend every where, but whom he had not yet seen, although he was now an old man. The aged sceptic is not a little conceited, as the following exordium to one of his speeches evinces: "It is very strange that I never meet with any one who is equal in sense to myself." The same old man, in one of his communicative moods, ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 2 • John Franklin
... young gentleman differed widely from them in point of political principles, he was not one of those enthusiasts who look upon every schism from the established articles of faith as damnable, and exclude the sceptic from every benefit of humanity and Christian forgiveness: he could easily comprehend how a man of the most unblemished morals might, by the prejudice of education, or indispensable attachments, be engaged in such a blameworthy ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... spet upon his grave, for all the good we shall do en by what we lift up, now he's got so far,' said Notton, the clarionet man and professed sceptic of the choir. 'But I'm ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy
... now what to call you," cried the same Mihalevitch, at three o'clock in the morning. "You are not a sceptic, nor a pessimist, nor a Voltairean, you are a loafer, and you are a vicious loafer, a conscious loafer, not a simple loafer. Simple loafers lie on the stove and do nothing because they don't know how to do anything; they don't think about anything either, but you are a man of ideas—and ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... "that you are a sensationalist, a materialist, a sceptic, a revolutionist; and if you had not sought the assistance of a god, I should have said not much better than an atheist. I also think it is time I thought about some physic for you instead of metaphysics, which are bad for my head, ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... imagine an eternity of accomplished facts. It is, perhaps, for this reason that doubt of immortality never really comes to youth. One of the few things which our friend still believes is that every sceptic who deals honestly with his only history must be aware of an hour, almost a moment, of waning youth, when the vague potentiality of disbelief became a living doubt, thence-forward to abide with him till death resolve it. Endless not-being ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... make space, and give time. Their exertions are of the highest value, so long as they confine their administration of the concerns of the inferior powers of our nature within the limits due to the superior ones. But whilst the sceptic destroys gross superstitions, let him spare to deface, as some of the French writers have defaced, the eternal truths charactered upon the imaginations of men. Whilst the mechanist abridges, and the political economist combines labour, let them beware that their speculations, for want of correspondence ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... never,' soliloquised the sceptic, 'I have never known a man without his skeleton. I wonder if you have one, my lord. You look cheerful, you seem thoroughly happy; but you are too fortunate. If you have not a skeleton now, I feel convinced you will have to build a cupboard for one ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... very pleasant hour hooking shiners and chub, and an occasional perch that looked at a distance like a trout. The dominie, apropos of his friend's braces, told Alphonse Karr's story of the bretellier in the Jardin des Plantes, and the credulous sceptic who did not believe that a suspender tree existed. He knew that cotton grew on a shrub, and that caoutchouc exuded from a tree, and admitted the possibility of their natural combination, but thought his deceivers had reference ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... with our faces ever held open to Him, the glory of His face will be reflected in ours, and we shall be changed more and more into His image.[87] I have frequently told the story of the jurist who lived in our middle-west country two generations ago, a confirmed but honest sceptic, and who was converted by the face of a fellow townsman. The sceptic became thoroughly convinced that the thing in his neighbour's face which so attracted him was his Christian faith, and it was this that led the sceptic to accept Christ. ...
— Quiet Talks on Following the Christ • S. D. Gordon
... in body, unconquerable, and immortal. Such individuals meet in comradeship, and pass together along the open roads of the world. No one is excluded because of his poverty or his sins; there is room in the ideal America for everybody except the doubter and sceptic. Whitman does not linger over the smaller groups of human society, like the family. He is not a fireside poet. He passes directly from his strong persons, meeting freely on the open road, to his conception ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... not a disillusioned man, then a sceptuik, and that is still worse." (Mikhalevitch's pronunciation still smacked of his native Little Russia.) "And what right hast thou to be a sceptic? Thou hast had bad luck in life, granted; that was no fault of thine: thou wert born with a passionate, loving soul, and thou wert forcibly kept away from women: the first woman that came in thy way was bound ...
— A Nobleman's Nest • Ivan Turgenieff
... herself. And it was the sound of it that the mistress liked as she listened, at least she was not thinking of the sense, but of the ease and readiness with which the long words glided from the child's lips. It was about "the sceptic" that she was reading—the man who had striven to make this fair ...
— Allison Bain - By a Way she knew not • Margaret Murray Robertson
... back as far as he is able to the condition of a rational beast. He is to limit himself to the pursuit of pleasure, but of this he is to make a far-sighted calculation;—he is to be rationalized, secularized, animalized: or he is to be an amiable sceptic, better than his own philosophy, and not falling below the opinions of ...
— Theaetetus • Plato
... that straining of the whole being, that longing to be among the first ranks, which is always inspired by the first approach of the battle? Again, No. Did he really believe in this cause? Did he believe in his love? "Oh, cursed aesthetic! Sceptic!" his lips murmured inaudibly. Why this weariness, this disinclination to speak, unless it be shouting or raving? What is this inner voice that he wishes to drown by his shrieking? But Mariana, this delightful, faithful comrade, this pure, passionate soul, this wonderful girl, does she not love ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev
... surprised at our strange proceedings. Dr. Simson did nothing but utter subdued laughs under his breath. "I thought as much," he said. "It is just the same with tables and all other kinds of ghostly apparatus; a sceptic's presence stops everything. When I am present nothing ever comes off. How long do you think it will be necessary to stay here? Oh, I don't complain; only when you ...
— The Open Door, and the Portrait. - Stories of the Seen and the Unseen. • Margaret O. (Wilson) Oliphant
... said Lord Woodville. "You have only to reflect for a single moment, in order to be convinced that I could not augur the possibility of the pain to which you have been so unhappily exposed. I was yesterday morning a complete sceptic on the subject of supernatural appearances. Nay, I am sure that had I told you what was said about that room, those very reports would have induced you, by your own choice, to select it for your accommodation. ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... philosophy can no longer claim 'the prize,' we must not refuse to acknowledge the great benefits conferred by it on the world. All philosophies are refuted in their turn, says the sceptic, and he looks forward to all future systems sharing the fate of the past. All philosophies remain, says the thinker; they have done a great work in their own day, and they supply posterity with aspects of the truth and with instruments of thought. Though they may be shorn of their glory, they ...
— Philebus • Plato
... the Expedition, which he knew were likely to become public documents, my son seldom or never touched upon the all-important subject of religion. This has given rise to an opinion broadly hinted in Australia by some, and of course believed by more, that he was either a sceptic or a downright infidel. Nothing could be further from the truth. His mother's love had instructed him early and zealously in the doctrines of Christianity, and prepared his mind for a conviction of their divine truth when he reached an age which would enable him to exercise ...
— Successful Exploration Through the Interior of Australia • William John Wills
... sum up these considerations on physical suffering, the case between a theist and a sceptic as to the question of divine beneficence is seen to be a case of extreme simplicity. The theist believes in such beneficence by purposely concealing from his mind all adverse evidence—feeling, on the one side, that to entertain the doubt to which this evidence points ...
— A Candid Examination of Theism • George John Romanes
... readers discern any such corner-stone, or even so much as what Teufelsdroeckh is looking at? He exclaims, 'Or hast thou forgotten Paris and Voltaire? How the aged, withered man, though but a Sceptic, Mocker, and millinery Court-poet, yet because even he seemed the Wisest, Best, could drag mankind at his chariot-wheels, so that princes coveted a smile from him, and the loveliest of France would have laid their hair beneath his feet! All Paris was one vast Temple of Hero-worship; though their ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... in order to give it a piece of his mind. But the fight is unequal for the old philosophical reason: that the universe had already given Mr. Hardy a piece of its mind to fight with. One curious result of this divergence in the two types of sceptic is this: that when these two brilliant novelists break down or blow up or otherwise lose for a moment their artistic self-command, they are both equally wild, but wild in opposite directions. Meredith shows an extravagance in comedy which, ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... sceptic, the cause of emotion, [ii] No doubt can the mind of your lover invade; He worships each look with such faithful devotion, A smile can enchant, or a tear ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... chiefly against ethics. But let us ascend a step higher. If we rely upon Reason, how do we know that Reason itself is trustworthy? Do we not want some criterion for it? And, even if such a criterion existed, must we not have for it, in its turn, some higher criterion? The Sceptic thus justified his assertion that to man there ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... Thus the sceptic still continues to reason and believe, even though be asserts, that he cannot defend his reason by reason; and by the same rule he must assent to the principle concerning the existence of body, though he cannot pretend by any arguments of philosophy ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... them, the younger, was short and swarthy, a Savoyard, the son of an Italian doctor at St. Jean de Maurienne. He was a sceptic; he believed in Jeanne, but not in the legends ...
— The Valley of Vision • Henry Van Dyke
... something of scorn. "Naturally! Are you still so much of a sceptic that you think an ANGEL would have bidden you seek a place that had no existence? Oh, yes! I see you are inclined to treat your ethereal adventure as a mere dream,— but I know it was a reality, more real than anything in this present world." And turning to the loaded bookshelves ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... Godwin or Shelley or the deists of the eighteenth century of the nature-worshipping humanists of the Renaissance, without discovering that you differ from them twice as much as you differ from the Pope. You are a nineteenth-century sceptic, and you are always telling me that I ignore the cruelty of nature. If you had been an eighteenth-century sceptic you would have told me that I ignore the kindness and benevolence of nature. You ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... undaunted soul Sails o'er the seas from pole to pole Sees many wonders, which become So wonderful they strike one dumb, When we in their description view Monsters which Adam never knew. Yet, on the other hand, the sceptic Supplies his moral antiseptic; Denying unto truths belief, With groans which give his ears relief: But truth is stranger far than fiction, And outlives sceptic contradiction. Read Pliny or old Aldrovandus, If—they would say—you understand us. Let other monsters stand ...
— Fables of John Gay - (Somewhat Altered) • John Gay
... was a great shock to me. It seemed clear from his answers to the sceptic that the case for doctrinal orthodoxy and all that faded and by no means awful hereafter, which I had hitherto accepted as I accepted the sun, was an extremely poor one, and to hammer home that idea the first book I got from the Institute happened to be an American ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... imitating only the vices of Christianity, and manifesting a contempt for Moslem virtues. While he drank wine—and in many other breaches of the teachings of the sacred book provoked the faithful—his proclamations breathed a most orthodox and fanatical spirit. He was a sceptic; neither Mussulman nor Christian, but surprisingly inconsistent and capricious. His, we fear, were 'hangman's hands,' and 'not ordained to build ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... his friends. If he was bored by Montaigne, it was because he had little introspective curiosity. Like Montaigne himself, however, he was much the servant of whim in his literary tastes. That he was no sceptic but a disciple as regards Shakespeare and Milton and Pope and Gray suggests, on the other hand, how foolish it is to regard him as being critically ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... Sir Lionel's tenants) was alarmed by strange and supernatural noises: one apartment in especial, occupied by a female member of the household, was allowed, even by the clerk of the parish, a very bold man, and a bit of a sceptic, to be haunted; the windows of that chamber were wont to open and shut, thin airy voices confabulate therein, and dark shapes hover thereout, long after the fair occupant had, with the rest of the family, retired to repose. But the most unaccountable ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... a god, Empedocles coldly threw himself in burning Etna." The fraud, it was said, was detected by one of his shoes being cast up from the crater. Whatever the manner of his end, the Etna story may probably be taken as an ill-natured joke of some sceptic wit; and it is certain that no such story was believed by his fellow-citizens, who rendered in after years ...
— A Short History of Greek Philosophy • John Marshall
... spiritualism, and most other "isms," lie outside "the limits of philosophical inquiry," and David Hume's great service to humanity is his irrefragable demonstration of what these limits are. Hume called himself a sceptic, and therefore others cannot be blamed if they apply the same title to him; but that does not alter the fact that the name, with its existing implications, does him ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... she, the young condottiera of Algeria, showed with so tender a charity to the soldier of Bonaparte. To him, moreover, her fiery imperious voice was gentle as the dove, her wayward dominant will was pliant as the reed, her contemptuous sceptic spirit was reverent as a child's before an altar. In her sight the survivor of the Army of Italy was sacred; sacred the eyes which, when full of light, had seen the sun glitter on the breastplates of the Hussars of Murat, the Dragoons of Kellerman, the Cuirassiers of Milhaud; sacred the hands ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... no concern, compared with his fear that his own castle would suffer in wars of the League. As to the Reformation, he held it for a hasty, conceited movement on the part of persons who did not know what they were meddling with, and, being a perfect sceptic, he was a perfectly good Churchman. Full of tolerance, good-humour, and content, cheerful in every circumstance, simple and charming, yet melancholy in his hour, Montaigne is a thorough representative of the French spirit in literature. His English translator ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... opened till a tertain period which the Ba'al Shem specified, and in case of disobedience a torrent of fearful calamities would overwhelm the Goldsmids. The patriarch's curiosity was not aroused for some time; but in a few years after the Ba'al Shem's death, Goldsmid, the aged, half sceptic, half curious, forced open the fatal box, and then the Goldsmids began to learn what it was to disbelieve the words of a Ba'al Shem."—Margoliouth, History of the ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... dwell in soothfastness," is there set forth in a series of ringing sentences, most of which, set in Emerson or Thoreau, would seem part of their text and thought. That this is no random attribution may be learned from the lecture on "Montaigne: the Sceptic," which Emerson has included in his REPRESENTATIVE MEN. "I remember," he says, telling how in his youth he stumbled on Cotton's translation, "I remember the delight and wonder in which I lived with it. It seemed to me as if I had myself written the book in some former life, ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson
... python of political corruption casts its "rings" about the neck of proud cities and sovereign States, and throttles honesty to silence and liberty to death. It is such an age, dark, confused, shameful, that the sceptic and the scorner must face, when they turn their backs upon those ancient shrines where the flames of faith and integrity and devotion are flickering like the deserted altar-fires of a ...
— The Americanism of Washington • Henry Van Dyke
... history. It stares us full in the face. It arrests the attention of even the least observant. It puzzles the historian. It taxes the explanatory powers of the philosopher, and will remain to the end, a permanent difficulty to the scoffer and to the sceptic, and to all those who have not faith. As a fact in history, it is unique: forming an extraordinary exception to the law of universal change: a portent, and a standing miracle. Its persistence, century after century, in spite of fire ...
— The Purpose of the Papacy • John S. Vaughan
... then?" he interposed. He was a sceptic who called himself agnostic. The mystery of earth and heaven might be interpreted, but always in terms of science; yet he did not fancy the superior manner in which this charlatan flouted the supernatural. He had heard of her ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... rude Indian, with the impassioned English Methodist, with all who cannot shake off the mystic belief in a life that shall go on behind the veil. When the pagan emperor spoke to his own parting soul, he asked the piercing question that our sceptic must needs put, whether he like it ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... talk of the reign of reason. It is no more a state to justify pride than that of the Eastern sybarite who will not even lift his food to his mouth; he is "reasonable" also in that he sees no value in activity, and therefore does not exercise it. So with the sceptic; decay follows the condition of inaction, whether it be mental, psychic, ...
— Light On The Path and Through the Gates of Gold • Mabel Collins
... weeping child is made the callous, heartless man; of the all-believing child, the sneering sceptic; of the beautiful and modest, the shameless and abandoned; and this is what the world does ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... surveyed his position. He had pledged his love to one who could never return it on earth. He would walk alone until his release. Joy in anticipation of their reunion was sufficient for him. True, he felt there was a great disparity in their relative positions—she a mighty priestess, he a sceptic of her faith. But what of that? He believed in Saronia, and she believed in him. Let the faiths go to the winds! If he found not a new god that he might worship—well, then he would make Saronia the goddess of his soul, and worship ...
— Saronia - A Romance of Ancient Ephesus • Richard Short
... Tower of Babel was destroyed by the hand of Him whose name I dare not pronounce,' said the sceptic. ...
— The History of a Lie - 'The Protocols of the Wise Men of Zion' • Herman Bernstein
... Calvinism, he never quite got it out of his blood. There is much truth in this metaphor. Burns was, in religious matters, one of a very large class. Many men rid their intellects of a superstition, without being able to resist its power over their feelings. Even so profound a sceptic as Renan has admitted that his life is guided by a faith he no longer possesses. And we are all familiar with instances ...
— Prisoner for Blasphemy • G. W. [George William] Foote
... conversations when they all met; and one of the gentlemen continually introduced deistical notions, when he ridiculed the pageantry they all were surprised at observing. Mary thought of both the subjects, the Romish tenets, and the deistical doubts; and though not a sceptic, thought it right to examine the evidence on which her faith was built. She read Butler's Analogy, and some other authors: and these researches made her a christian from conviction, and she learned charity, particularly with respect ...
— Mary - A Fiction • Mary Wollstonecraft
... little sceptic! Dost thou still doubt? What I most prize in woman Is her affections, not her intellect! The intellect is finite; but the affections Are infinite, and cannot be exhausted. Compare me with the great men of the earth; What am I? Why, a pygmy among giants! But if thou lovest,—mark ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... things; why, for example, did she not see tables dance, and tea-urns walk? All that would be fancy, unblushing, genuine fancy, and if she conjured up one absurdity, why not another! That was a conundrum for any sceptic. Thus did she argue, naturally and logically, in the quite sensible fashion of a lawyer, or a scientist; yet, all the while, her senses told her that the atmosphere of the house had undergone some profoundly ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell
... prince," he continued, after a moment's silence. "I have observed of late that you have grown sceptical about everything. You don't seem to believe in people as you did, and are always attributing motives and so on—am I using the word 'sceptic' in its ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... her as if he doubted her assertion; but he would indeed have been a sceptic as to the depth of the power of woman's affection had he longer continued to doubt when he saw her beseeching and almost agonised countenance turned on him, waiting ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... this passage contains truths that no infidel or sceptic will dare to deny. There are some passages in the Word of God that need no other proof than that which we can easily find in our daily experience. This is one of them. If the Bible were to be blotted out of existence, the words I ...
— Sowing and Reaping • Dwight Moody
... themselves. At the same time he was a religious man and a theist. "In religion," says his biographer, "Agassiz very liberal and tolerant, and respected the views and convictions of every one. In his youth and early manhood, Agassiz was undoubtedly a materialist, or, more exactly, a sceptic; but in time, and little by little, his studies led him to belief in a divine Creative Power. He was more in sympathy with Unitarianism than with ...
— Unitarianism in America • George Willis Cooke
... not see life through the last term." The apparition is, of course, easily explained by reference to a generally morbid temperament and a specially excited fancy. The impression which it made on the mind of a sceptic, noted for never believing in anything which was not actually submitted to his senses, is an instance of the tendency of superstition to creep into the void left in the heart by faith, and as such may be classed with ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... alarms the lord Of Christendom. You quake at every virtue; He, not to mar the glorious form of Freedom, Suffers that the hideous hosts of Evil Should run riot in his fair Creation. Him the maker we behold not; calm He veils himself in everlasting laws, Which and not Him the sceptic seeing exclaims, 'Wherefore a God? The World itself is God.' And never did a Christian's adoration So praise him as this ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... only practical position, without being untrue to our common Christianity, and enemies to our Church. It has been urged against our educational articles, that we have failed to take into account the fall of man: he would surely be an incorrigible sceptic, we reply, who could look upon statements such as these, and yet doggedly persist in doubting that man has fallen. But, alas! it is not a matter on which to congratulate ourselves, that when the Established Church ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... But some sceptic may assail us with a note of interrogation, saying, "Is there a man in the moon?" "Why, of course, there is!" Those who have misgivings should ask a sailor; he knows, for the punsters assure us that he has been to sea. Or let them ask any lunatic; he should know, for he has been so struck ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... for the simple reason that he was a humorist, and could not have been one if he would. Your true cynic is a sceptic also; he is distrustful by nature, his laugh is a bark of selfish suspicion, and he scorns man, not because he has fallen below himself, but because he can rise no higher. But humor of the truest quality ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... Seraglio swallowed gold on both sides. The Chacham Aaron de la Papa, being an unbeliever and one of those who had originally driven him from his birthplace, was removed by Sabbatai, and Chayim Benvenisti appointed Chacham instead. The noble Chayim Penya, the one sceptic of importance left in Smyrna, was wellnigh torn to pieces in the synagogue by the angry multitude, but when his own daughters went into prophetic trances and saw the glory of the Kingdom he went over to Sabbatai's side, ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... blase, at least a sceptic,[A] and that is still worse. But what right have you to be a sceptic? Your life has not been a success, I admit. That wasn't your fault. You were endowed with a soul full of affection, fit for passionate love, and you were kept ...
— Liza - "A nest of nobles" • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... of Samuel Green, the carpenter, and exchanged a word with John McNider as he passed his forge, where he afterward often stopped to have a talk. The first theological discussion he had in Gershom was held in Peter Longley's shoe-shop, one morning when he found that amiable sceptic alone and disposed—as he generally was—for a declaration of his rather peculiar views of doctrine and practice; and his first temperance lecture was given to an audience of one, as he drove in Mark Varney's ox-cart over that poor man's dreary ...
— David Fleming's Forgiveness • Margaret Murray Robertson
... permanently be upheld by the sword he knew to be impossible. What he had hoped for was the gradual winning of England to a sense of its worth. But every day the current of opinion ran more strongly against it. The army stood alone in its purpose. Papist and sceptic, mystic and ceremonialist, latitudinarian and Presbyterian, all were hostile. The very pressure of Cromwell's system gave birth to new forms of spiritual and intellectual revolt. Science, rationalism, secularism, sprang for the first time into vivid life in their protest against the forced ...
— History of the English People, Volume VI (of 8) - Puritan England, 1642-1660; The Revolution, 1660-1683 • John Richard Green
... are naturally related to the "priest or sceptic." In the rapid, skipping rhythm, Mr. Hale finds the tarentella suggested by the "friend ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp
... exclaimed the youthful sceptic, using a favourite expression of his father's to express incredulity. 'The reason Brian doesn't come to Kingthorpe is, that he has other fish to fry elsewhere. As if anybody would come to Kingthorpe who ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... a sceptic Mutters language rather rude; Here and there a wan dyspeptic, Yielding to a peevish mood, Wonders why a winning nation finds itself so ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152. January 17, 1917 • Various
... propose, that there should be at least an edge of foliage round the outskirts of the said wig; and that its curls should not exceed in number the leaves of the tree. There is also another practice almost equally prevalent, of which I am sceptic enough to doubt the propriety. I own, I cannot think it by any means conducive to the more effectual concealment of his Majesty, that there should be three Regal Crowns stuck on three different branches of the ...
— Parodies of Ballad Criticism (1711-1787) • William Wagstaffe
... at all?" said Guildea. "If we do you may trot out the theory that we are not in a perfectly normal condition. I know you, Murchison, devout Priest and devout sceptic." ...
— Tongues of Conscience • Robert Smythe Hichens
... yet remains some sceptic, who doubts of our primary truth, and of all deductions we make, taking such truth as our standard, he must either be arguing in bad faith, or we must confess that there are men in complete mental blindness either ...
— On the Improvement of the Understanding • Baruch Spinoza [Benedict de Spinoza]
... in his "Representative Men," makes Montaigne stand for The Sceptic. Sceptic Montaigne was. He questioned, he considered, he doubted. He stood poised in equilibrium, in indifference, between contrary opinions. He saw reasons on this side, but he saw reasons also on that, and he did not clear his mind. "Que scai-je?" ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... 'corrupts the saliva—that's why men took to pepper. Scepticism is the only philosophy that doesn't bring a taste in the mouth.' 'Nay,' says poor Lorenzo de' Medici, 'you must be out there, Luigi. Here is this untainted sceptic, Matteo Franco, who wants hotter sauce than any of us.' 'Because he has a strong opinion of himself,' flashes out Luigi, which is the original egg of all other opinion. He a sceptic? He believes in the immortality of his own verses. He is such a logician as that preaching ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... mention was there of the great and wonderful organization—a mere far-off glimpse of which had so captured Lord Evelyn's fervent imagination? Not a word. The sceptic who had come among them could find nothing either to justify or allay his suspicions. But it might safely be said that, for the moment at least, his suspicions as regarded one of those two were dormant. It was difficult to associate trickery, ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... into his outrage against religion. An outrage against religion committed by M. Flaubert! And in what respect, if you please? The Government Attorney has thought he found in him a sceptic. I can assure the Government Attorney that he is deceived. I am not here to make a profession of faith, I am here only to defend a book, and for that reason I shall limit myself to a simple word. ...
— The Public vs. M. Gustave Flaubert • Various
... with special heaviness on himself. Oddly enough, it was a habit of religious discussion. Lady Tressady in health had never troubled herself in the least as to what the doctors of the soul might have to say, and had generally gaily professed herself a sceptic in religious matters, mostly, as George had often thought, for the sake of escaping all inconvenient restrictions—such as family prayers, or keeping Sunday, or observing Lent—which might have got in the ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... insincerity. Such is the power of tradition and virtue of a festival, and such the instinctive brotherliness of men, that on this day the mere sight of an acquaintance will soften the voice and warm the heart of the most superior sceptic and curmudgeon that the age of disillusion has produced. In spite of himself, faith flickers up in him again, be it only for a moment. And, during that moment, he is almost like those whose bright faith the age has never tarnished, like the great and like the simple, to whom it is quite unnecessary ...
— The Feast of St. Friend • Arnold Bennett
... a university—its spirit of humility, and of reverence for antiquity—begins. The true university man, born and bred in the century, not in the years, in the race halls, not those alone in his Alma Mater, is neither a scoffer nor an atheist, nor a critic, sceptic, or cynic. He is a man of simple and exalted faith. God, who hath brought such great things to pass in science, nature, and art, in human character, in the destiny of nations, and the history of humble men and women, is a God before whom there must be awe and ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown
... with poorer weapons, and where their strength failed them, heart and feeling took the place of strength; and their truth and their tenderness went straight to the heart of their young world, as only the highest perfection of illusion could appeal to the eyes of the critical, half-sceptic generation that came ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... rebellious moderns have a curious tendency to flock together in self-defence, even when they have nothing in common. The mere aggregation of denials rather attracts the slovenly and the unattached. The lack of positive dogma expressed by such a coalition encourages the sceptic and the uneducated, who do not realize that the deliberate suppression of dogma is itself a dogma of extreme arrogance. We trust too much to the label, nowadays, and the brief descriptions we attach to ourselves have a gradually increasing connotation. ...
— G. K. Chesterton, A Critical Study • Julius West
... gentleman who Christian was, and with pleasure," cried a lucid, rather sallow little man that had sat quietly smiling and listening. "My name, let me tell you, is Atheist, sir; and Christian was formerly a very near neighbour of an old friend of my family's—Mr. Sceptic. They lived, sir—at least in ...
— Henry Brocken - His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance • Walter J. de la Mare
... "Sceptic," and "infidel." They swore his doctrines without fail Would plunge him into hell. But he with proofs in no way lame, Made this deduction firm, That all organic beings came ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... yet a sceptic in the matter, being very little disposed to hasty credulity on such occasions, especially where there is a possibility of deceit. But I must say that the doctrine of probabilities seems to me to furnish strong arguments in the corrector's favour; and that the attacks of professed Shakspearian critics ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 196, July 30, 1853 • Various
... that height of refinedness beyond what it was when I first came to be acquainted therewith, that now the learnedst and most prudent philosophers are not ashamed to be seen entering in at the porches and frontispieces of the schools of the Pyrrhonian, Aporrhetic, Sceptic, and Ephectic sects. Blessed be the holy name of God! Veritably, it is like henceforth to be found an enterprise of much more easy undertaking to catch lions by the neck, horses by the main, oxen by the horns, bulls ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... Come, sceptic, make a trial of it. Go to the Fiji Islands; get yourself wrecked among them. Be cast into the stormy deep; buffet the waves manfully, and succeed in struggling exhausted to the shore. The savages ...
— Sunk at Sea • R.M. Ballantyne
... and a popular expedient, of late years, to deny the personal or real existence of men and things whose life and condition were too much for our belief. This system—which has often comforted the religious sceptic, and substituted the consolations of Strauss for those of the New Testament—has been of incalculable value to the historical theorists of the last and present centuries. To question the existence of Alexander the Great, would be a more excusable act, than to believe in that ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... to appear fashionable. He is usually conceited, obstinate, puffed up with pride, a great talker, always shallow and fickle, skipping from one subject to another without even thoroughly examining a single one. At one moment he is a Deist, at another a Materialist, then he is a Sceptic, and again an Atheist; always changing his views, but always a slave of his passions, ...
— Public School Education • Michael Mueller
... held them would have burnt alive those who did not. Now, they have to console themselves with the comforting thought of the fire that shall never be quenched. But even Job's patience could not stand the self-sufficiency of his pious reprovers. The sceptic too may retort: 'No doubt but ye are the people, and wisdom shall ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... there is a vulgar incredulity, which, in historical matters as well as in those of religion, finds it easier to doubt than to examine, and endeavours to assume the credit of an esprit fort, by denying whatever happens to be a little beyond the very limited comprehension of the sceptic. And so, that point being settled, and you possessing, as we understand, the open sesamum into these secret apartments, how, if we may ask, do you intend to avail yourself of your privilege? Do you propose to pass the night in the ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... diverse accounts of the facts of a seance will be given by a believer and a sceptic. A whole party of believers will affirm that they saw Mr. Home float out of one window, and in at another, while a single honest sceptic declares that Mr. Home was sitting in his chair all the time. And in this last case we have an example of a ...
— Psychic Phenomena - A Brief Account of the Physical Manifestations Observed - in Psychical Research • Edward T. Bennett
... credit of the French thinkers almost abruptly falling. Voltaire, never very popular in England, becomes "as mischievous a monkey as any of them"; the enthusiasm for Rousseau, which had reached extravagant proportions, completely disappears, and he is merely the slanderous sceptic, who, after soaking other people's waistcoats with his tears, sent his own babies to the Foundling Hospital. The influence of the French eighteenth-century literature on the mind of England was first ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... To the Sceptic—(an apostate, and an undoubted male)—another view was preferable. He held that George Eliot had carried what he called the 'Death's-Head Style' of art a trifle too far. He read her books in much the same spirit and to much the same purpose ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... expectations to the philosophers. I not only read, but I studied and pondered them with diligence, and with as sincere a desire of arriving at truth as ever scholar sat at the feet of his instructer. The result was anything but satisfying, I ended a universal sceptic, so far as human systems of philosophy were concerned, so far as they pretended to solve the enigma of God and man, of life and death; but with a heart, nevertheless, yearning after truth; and even full of faith, if that may be called faith which would instinctively lay ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... always only experience of a particular moment; only by means of Thought, and trust in Thought, can such Experience be extended, communicated, utilized. The sceptic, to be at all effective, practises this trust as really as does his opponent. Thought, taken apart from Experience, is indeed artificial and arid; but Experience without Thought, is largely an orderless flux. Philosophers as different ...
— Progress and History • Various
... by some "omnipotent devil," to use Mr. Newman's expression; if it be, then that whisper of him cannot be trusted: the heathen was right, "Sunt superis sua jura." In other words, I feel that I must become an Atheist, a Pantheist, a Manichaean, or—what I am—a sceptic. ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... accompaniment, though the child of a creative brain—the burning emanation from some Apollo-stricken votary of "the lying nine," imbued with all his stern morality, is strictly "true." This startling fact is not left wrapped in mystery. The veriest sceptic cannot, in imagination, grave a fancied double meaning on that richest gift. No—the motto follows, and seems to say—Now, as the champion of Giles Scroggins, hurl I this gauntlet down; let him that dare, uplift it! Here ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, September 12, 1841 • Various
... To-night, again the position was reversed, and it seemed that Major Benjy was "good" and Captain Puffin was "bad." On the whole, then, there was cause for thankfulness, and as she added a tin of biscuits and two jars of bovril to her prudent stores, she found herself a conscious sceptic about those Roman roads. Diaries (perhaps) were a little different, for egoism was a more potent force than archaeology, and for her part she now definitely believed that Roman roads spelt some form of drink. She was sorry to believe it, but it was her duty to believe something of the kind, and ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson
... attacking her; yet was not without a certain respect for her. Old sceptic that she was, ideals of any sort imposed upon her. How people came by them, she herself ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Some sceptic may choose to disdain it, Or one feign to read it aright; Or wisdom may seek to explain it— This ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... impartiality. On the contrary, the alleged transmutations always occurred in obscure places, and in the presence of people who, one has reason to believe, were both hysterical and imaginative, and therefore predisposed to see wonders. So says this order of sceptic, and, to my mind, he says a great deal more than his facts justify; for although contemporary writers generally are agreed that a large percentage of those people who voluntarily confessed they were werwolves were mere dissemblers, there is no ...
— Werwolves • Elliott O'Donnell
... sceptic shut the flask again in the secret drawer in the Gothic table—he meant to run no more risks of losing the ...
— The Elixir of Life • Honore de Balzac
... mistake, Razumov. This is not murder—it is war, war. My spirit shall go on warring in some Russian body till all falsehood is swept out of the world. The modern civilization is false, but a new revelation shall come out of Russia. Ha! you say nothing. You are a sceptic. I respect your philosophical scepticism, Razumov, but don't touch the soul. The Russian soul that lives in all of us. It has a future. It has a mission, I tell you, or else why should I have been moved to do this—reckless—like a butcher—in the middle of all these innocent people—scattering ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... him already in all its consequences. This circumstance strengthened his conviction immensely, but also augmented his indignation. Somebody, he felt, ought to be punished for it—punished with great severity. Being no sceptic, but a moral creature, he was in a manner at the mercy of his ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... all the wealth and wisdom of this world would I weaken the faith of the humblest Christian in his Divine Lord and Saviour; but if, by the grace of God, I could convert a single sceptic to a child-like faith in him, who lived and died for me and for all, I would feel that I ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... colossal calm, a superior race—in short, the whole claim of the Teutons to be the highest spiritual product of Nature and Evolution. But as I have noticed a calm unity even more complete, not only in dogs and negroes, but in slugs, slow-worms, mangoldwurzels, moss, mud and bits of stone, I am a sceptic about this test for the marshalling in rank of all the children of God. Now I point this out to you here for a very practical reason. The Prussian will never understand revolutions—which are generally ...
— The Appetite of Tyranny - Including Letters to an Old Garibaldian • G.K. Chesterton
... was the husband of Mr. Webster's eldest sister, who died many years before the visit here referred to. He was known as a great sceptic in religious matters in early life, and hence Mr. Webster's earnest desire to visit him soon after he heard of ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 3, March, 1886 - Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 3, March, 1886 • Various
... to throw ridicule upon the Celt-lovers,—on the contrary, I feel a great deal of sympathy with them,—but rather, to make it clear what an immense advantage the Celt-haters, the negative side, have in the controversy about Celtic antiquity; how much a clear-headed sceptic, like Mr. Nash, may utterly demolish, and, in demolishing, give himself the appearance of having won an entire victory. But an entire victory he has, as I will next proceed to ...
— Celtic Literature • Matthew Arnold
... she knew that what to the average hardily bred young man was a gay adventure, was to him an ordeal of considerable difficulty. She longed for his first leave, so that she could parade him before the town, in the event of there being a lurking sceptic who still refused to believe that he ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... era in the history of human knowledge. It is a mistake, however, to suppose that he was the first to infuse even into Roman story that element of doubt which has changed the whole fabric of historical science. If Niebuhr was a mere sceptic, he would be only the humble follower of Bayle, Lesurgnes de Pouilly, and other writers of the last century; but his merit lies in reconstruction—in the jealous care with which he distinguishes between the true monuments of history and the mass of traditional ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 453 - Volume 18, New Series, September 4, 1852 • Various
... the medical profession as to the fact that puerperal fever is sometimes communicated from one person to another, both directly and indirectly. In the present state of our knowledge upon this point I should consider such doubts merely as a proof that the sceptic had either not examined the evidence, or, having examined it, refused to accept its plain and unavoidable consequences. I should be sorry to think, with Dr. Rigby, that it was a case of "oblique vision;" I should be unwilling to force home the argumentum ad hominem of Dr. Blundell, but ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... much amused, and not tempted in the least to take a part. He beheld his father ponderously grinding sand, his mother fierily breaking butterflies, his brother labouring at the pleasures of the Hawbuck with the ardour of a soldier in a doubtful battle; and the vital sceptic looked on wondering. They were careful and troubled about many things; for him there seemed not even one thing needful. He was born disenchanted, the world's promises awoke no echo in his bosom, the world's activities and the world's distinctions seemed to him equally without ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... knew him at Oxford when I was a happy undergraduate." (Audrey could not imagine Langley Wyndham ever being an undergraduate; it seemed to her that he must always have been a Master of Arts.) "I knew the real Flaxman Reed, and he was as logical a sceptic as you or I. There was an epidemic of ideas in our time, and the poor fellow was frightened, so he took it—badly. Of course he made up his mind that he was going to die, and he was horribly afraid of dying. So instead of talking about his interesting symptoms, as you or I ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... remedy his or her fault. A dangerous campaign lay before him, and the omens—but pshaw! he was not one of the rabble, to tremble at a flight of birds from the west or an ox with a bad liver. He had always admired the spirit of that old sceptic, Claudius, who had drowned the chickens off Drepana, though he admitted the faulty judgment in failing to realize the effect of such a defiance upon ignorant seamen and marines: the hierarchy was necessary for the State; if only to keep fools ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne
... guest doubted Pickering's statement concerning the quality of his guests, he led them to the door of the small dining room, where the sceptic was relieved of his doubts, for Frances and Nelly looked their assumed ...
— The Touchstone of Fortune • Charles Major
... Irtish is unrivalled. Being nearly four miles long, it is on that account phenomenal; but its stupendous piers, designed specially to resist the fearful pressure of the ice, would alone convince any sceptic of the determination of the Russian administration to spare none of the resources of the Empire in order to make this railway absolutely efficient, alike for mercantile and military purposes. The Trans-Siberian Railway is intended ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various
... studies with an aching heart— For now, when smiles are rarely deemed sincere, In vain the sceptic bids his doubts depart— Those doubts at length ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... just seventy years ago to-day, walking at twilight by the churchyard-wall, saw the figure of himself sitting on a grave-stone, and died five weeks later riving with the pangs of hell. Whereat the sceptic showed his two ...
— Prince Zaleski • M.P. Shiel
... were threaded and tied, and tucking his parcel under his arm he set forth. He had forgotten his walking-staff and dared not go back to fetch it. Moreover, in Polpier it is held to be inauspicious if, once started on an enterprise, you turn back for something you have forgotten: and Nicky-Nan, a sceptic by habit, felt many superstitions assailing him this morning. For instance, he had been careful to lace up his right boot before ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... except to confirm him in that gospel of the sceptic: 'There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... be more. Oh, mother, have mercy! for Heaven has had mercy too.—I am no sceptic now. I believe, ay, fervently and ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... I find I am no sceptic, having affirmed no less than four times, that I am sure. Though this is extremely awkward, I am sure I will not write my letter over again; so pray excuse ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... important one—whether or not it be, as has been lately said,[4] "the noblest of all the tasks which it is given to the human mind to pursue." None but a sciolist will depreciate such a task; and none but a sceptic will doubt the value of the conclusions which may be thus reached. But all this is quite consistent with our position. The welfare of the soul is not involved in such matters as I have mentioned. A man is not good or bad, spiritual ...
— Religion and Theology: A Sermon for the Times • John Tulloch
... kind could commend itself neither to the dogmatist who maintains the certainty of his theories, nor to the sceptic who regards them as both meaningless and useless. I have dwelt upon them so long because they seem to me to represent a substantially logical and coherent view which commended itself to a man of very powerful intellect, and which may be presumed to represent much that ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen |
