|
|
|
More "Contemplation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... purpose?' he demanded. And I replied: 'That the contemplation of it may keep my hand sober and my feet on earth with the knowledge that few men are fortunate enough to have as much of a remnant of themselves as will compose a spearhead when they are three ...
— On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales • Jack London
... the conquerors of Mookerheyde. Remember Haarlem, which, although defended with the heroism which ought to have inspired respect and consideration in the hearts of the conquerors, was treated with cruelties from the bare contemplation of which the mind shrinks back with horror; then let us think of Alkmaar which so bravely and successfully resisted, and imitate the example of its citizens with the hope and confidence that we shall be equally successful in driving back the ...
— The Lily of Leyden • W.H.G. Kingston
... pray you, bear me hence From forth the noise and rumor of the field Where I may think the remnant of my thoughts In peace, and part this body and my soul With contemplation and devout desires. ...
— Leaves of Life - For Daily Inspiration • Margaret Bird Steinmetz
... interruption, his reverence proceeded to say he had recently learned that it had been the intention of the judges on the circuit to recommend Angus Ray, the lamented departed, as a justice for the district. This step had been in contemplation since the direful tragedy which had recently been perpetrated in their midst, and of which the facts remained still unexplained, though circumstantial evidence pointed to a ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... to Leicester, he never failed to keep them instructed, to the best of his ability. It must be confessed, however, that the shuffling and paltering among great men and little men, at that period, forms a somewhat painful subject of contemplation at ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... one central idea, VENGEANCE. "A false woman deserves death." Even this simple Sicilian mariner said so. "Go and kill her, go and kill her!" These words reiterated themselves over and over again in my ears, till I found myself almost uttering them aloud. My soul sickened at the contemplation of the woman Teresa—the mistress of a wretched brigand whose name was fraught with horror—whose looks were terrific—she, even SHE could keep herself sacred from the profaning touch of other men's caresses—she was proud of being faithful to her wolf of the mountains, whose ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... and scientific knowledge generally diffused augment human greed? Do they tend to promote avarice? Most certainly they do not. The man of science can see so much beyond—so much of beauty and design that even the drudgery of toil is forgotten in contemplation of the forces which ...
— A Broader Mission for Liberal Education • John Henry Worst
... the Supreme Deity, the American nations believe in a number of inferior spirits, whom the Delaware Indians term Manittos; they are both good and evil. 'From the accounts of the oldest Indians,' says Loskiel, 'it appears that when war was in contemplation, they used to admonish each other to hearken to the good, and not to evil spirits—the former always recommending peace.' They had formerly no notion of a devil, or evil being, in the Christian or Eastern sense of the term, but readily adopted, according ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... deed. Mr. Gahan, the English clergyman connected with the prison, was permitted to see her a short time before her murder. He gave her Holy Communion at ten o'clock on the night of October 11th. To him she declared she was happy in her contemplation of death; that she had no regret for what she had done; and that she was glad to die ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... her, he had left off wandering and had buried himself in an obscure Cornish village, where he gave himself up to his work. He was not quite so successful as he had been; on the other hand, he cared less than ever about success. It was the end of the century, a century that had been forced by the contemplation of such realities as plague and famine, and war and rumors of war, to forego and forget the melancholy art of its decadence. And from other causes Durant had fallen into a state of extreme dissatisfaction with himself. ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair
... characteristics of the bison, but more diminutive than any species of the bos genus in our natural history.' Then herds of agile creatures like antelopes are described, 'abounding on the acclivitous glades of the woods.' In the contemplation of these sprightly animals the narrator becomes quite lively. 'This beautiful creature,' says he, 'afforded us the most exquisite amusement. The mimicry of its movements upon our white painted canvas was as faithful and luminous as that ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... composed 'Reponds-moi la Marche des Gibaros,' 'Polonia,' 'Columbia,' 'Pastorella e Cavaliere,' 'Jeunesse,' and many other unpublished works. I allowed my fingers to run over the keys, wrapped up in the contemplation of these wonders; while my poor friend, whom I heeded but little, revealed to me with a childish loquacity the lofty destiny he held in reserve for humanity. Can you conceive the contrast produced by this shattered intellect ...
— Great Violinists And Pianists • George T. Ferris
... said, tapping him at once on the shoulder, and arresting him from the abstracted contemplation of two stylish girls in pink, who were just turning the corner of the churchyard ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... once gentle, yet strong, he stood at this time by her side. No wonder was it, therefore, that, with his support, Elise went forward successfully; no wonder was it, therefore, that from the firm conduct of her husband, and from the contemplation of the good understanding which existed between the married pair, the whispered blame, which had already begun to get abroad at their expense, died of itself, like ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... eyes of the world. Reflect how poor and minute a segment in the vast circle of eternity existence is at the best. Its sorrow and its shame are but moments. Always in my brightest and youngest hours I have wrapt my heart in the contemplation of an august futurity. ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... scanty locks, with his long white beard, and his hands crossed upon his breast, the King of Naples looked like one of those aged anchorites who spend their lives in mortifying the flesh, and whose souls, absorbed in heavenly contemplation, glide insensibly from out their last ecstasy into eternal bliss. Some time he lay thus with closed eyes, putting up a silent prayer to God; then he bade them light the spacious room as for a great ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... question," answered the Athenian. "I shall be delighted to make you acquainted with the past history of this woman before you enter her house. So long as we were on the Nile, I would not intrude my tale upon you; that ancient river has a wonderful power of compelling to silence and quiet contemplation. Even my usually quick tongue was paralyzed like yours, when I took my first ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... sometimes prepares even for peoples capable of development, but a self-incurred and in some measure historically necessary catastrophe. The very course of the last war proves this, whether we view it as a whole or in detail. When the establishment of the foreign rule was in contemplation, only single districts— mostly, moreover, German or half-German—offered energetic resistance. When the foreign rule was actually established, the attempts to shake it off were either undertaken altogether without judgment, or they were to an undue ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... man. But let me suggest, whether you, and all present, had not better now disperse. The powers that be will soon have their eyes upon us, and I would rather not excite their jealousy, at this time, on account of certain measures we have in contemplation, which I ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... of blissful contemplation he said, with a little note of regret in his voice: "I wish you had let me know about that plankin'. I'd have liked to put a little writin' under it—something sarcastic, that they could sort of meditate on when they sit there ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... general love of dogma prevailed. The cross-legged tailor plying his needle on his raised platform; the cobbler in the pauses of beating the leather on his lap-stone; and the field-laborer as he rested on his spade; discussed with serene and satisfied assurance problems, before the contemplation of which, the ripest learning and highest order of mind had veiled their faces. Dissatisfaction with the condition of things spread more and more. All, in both Church and State, was considered out of joint. The former had not sufficiently cleansed herself from ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... be perceived that I have laid out a very extensive and laborious work. But this is the great business of our lives; and, indeed, the contemplation of the glorious truths revealed in the Bible will form the business of eternity; and even that will be too short to learn the length and breadth, and height and depth, of the ways of ...
— A Practical Directory for Young Christian Females - Being a Series of Letters from a Brother to a Younger Sister • Harvey Newcomb
... who made both him and his object the frequent subjects of their coarse ridicule—the few who sympathized in his disappointment advised him to return, and refused further assistance in what they considered so hopeless a cause. At the same time he was informed that a murderous project was in contemplation against ...
— The Moravians in Labrador • Anonymous
... of this impulse to goodness, nothing is so effective as the contemplation of an historical example of such surpassing moral grandeur as that which we behold in Jesus. For this reason we may look to Jesus as the ideal of goodness presented to us in flesh and blood. Yet the assertion that Jesus' historical personality altogether corresponds ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore
... tenderness and care, she met only the half-contemptuous faces of her masculine associates. Yet a few of the spectators were, I think, touched by her sufferings. Sandy Tipton thought it was "rough on Sal," and, in the contemplation of her condition, for a moment rose superior to the fact that he had an ace and two bowers in ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... commander of the land forces and Hyder Ali. The latter was found to be much discontented with the scanty co-operation of the French general. Suffren, however, had won his favor, and he expressed a wish to see him on his return from the expedition then in contemplation; for, true to his accurate instinct, the commodore was bent upon again seeking out the English fleet, after beating which he intended to attack Negapatam. There was not in him any narrowness of professional prejudice; he kept always in view the necessity, both political ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan
... perhaps presenting themselves periodically at the public examinations, only to find that their laboured essays are thrown out amongst the ruck once more! Yet these last are undeniably the happier of the two. Having no wealth to excite the rapacious envy of their rulers, they pass through life in rapt contemplation of the sublime attributes of their Master, forgetting even the pangs of hunger in the elucidation of some obscure passage in the Book of Changes, and caring least of all for the idol of their unlettered brethren, except in so far as it would enable them to make more extensive purchases of ...
— Chinese Sketches • Herbert A. Giles
... those who are watched and wish to escape that gives them a gay, electric awareness and sparkle in the presence of an opportunity for release. Mrs. Hand had this. Cowperwood, a past master in this matter of femininity, studied her hands, her hair, her eyes, her smile. After some contemplation he decided, other things being equal, that Mrs. Hand would do, and that he could be interested if she were very much interested in him. Her telling eyes and smiles, the heightened color of her cheeks indicated after ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... plunged back into the Club together, leaving Langham to the philosophic and patient contemplation of the village green, its geese, its donkeys, and its surrounding fringe of houses. He felt that quite indisputably life would have been better worth living if, like Robert, he could have taken a passionate ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... turning-point in history. Foch's simple piety had led him into what was almost an indiscretion; he had asked for the special prayers of the faithful, the request had spread to conventual schools in England, and by the 16th it was guessed by those who knew the fact that a special effort was in contemplation. But his great counter-attack owed its importance to what had gone before and what was to follow; and victory was due to more complex and comprehensive causes than the valour of the troops engaged ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard
... of her thoughts upon her knees, of the pain and obloquy through which, if the worst came, she knew she must pass, and of her trust that she would be able to bear them; speaking in such terms, so simply, so bravely, and with so lofty a contemplation, that he who listened, and had been but a week before a young man as other young men, grew as he listened to another stature, and thought for himself thoughts that no man can have and remain as he was, before the tongues of ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... the sense of sublimity. It seems at times to be a fulfilment of the religious impulse. The religion which balks at work, stopping at prayer and contemplation, is a ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... said no more, but stood gazing at his picture, rapt in contemplation. Jaquith was silent, too, watching him, half in amusement, half—or more than half—in something not unlike reverence. Mr. Homer was not an imposing figure: his back was long, his legs were short, his hair and nose were distinctly absurd; but now, ...
— Mrs. Tree • Laura E. Richards
... was habituated to the difficult mechanism of the concentration of human forces, drew from this rich storehouse a multitude of images admirable for their reality and freshness, and which supplied him with mental nutriment through all his periods of clear-sighted contemplation." ...
— Honor de Balzac • Albert Keim and Louis Lumet
... read this most unobjectionable letter through, folded it up again, and placed it in his pocket. Clasping his hands, then, behind his back, a favourite attitude of his when he was in deep contemplation, he paced to and fro in the garden for ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... public opinion in upon itself and have excluded from public teaching and from the formation of thought every breath of fresh air from the outside world, until at last German public sentiment, through extreme and incessant self-contemplation, has lost the calmness and simplicity which were once the strength of the German character. No man can allot the responsibility for these things, spreading as they do over generations; but assuredly the responsibility does not rest with the half-dozen Ministers for ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,
... A contemplation of the circumstances attending these selfish recommendations leads one to wonder whether the Commissioners suffered from the lack of a sense of humour or an undue excess of it. In North and South America, for instance, we read that the slave-pens were ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... colleague," said Phellion, "I am, as you are, annoyed with my son for neglecting, as he does, the oldest friends of his family; and though the contemplation of those great luminous bodies suspended in space by the hand of the Creator presents, in my opinion, higher interest than it appears to have to your more eager brain, I think that Felix, by not coming here to-night, as he promised me he would, shows a want of propriety, about which, I ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... that region of spiritual ideas and spiritual persons where youth is perpetual, where ecstasy is no transient mood, but a permanent condition, and where dwell the awful forces which radiate immortal life into the will. In these men, contemplation, refusing to abide in the act by which it mounts above the world, reacts with tenfold force on the world. Using human ends simply as divine means, they wield war, statesmanship, literature, art, science, and philosophy with almost ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... its living expressiveness. Nor is his moral earnestness inferior. The end of life is indeed nominally pleasure, [76] "dux vitae dia voluptas;" but really it is a pure heart, "At bene non poterat sine puro pectore vivi." [77] He who first showed the way to this was the true deity. [78] The contemplation of eternal law will produce, not as the strict Epicureans say, indifference, [79] but resignation. [80] This happiness is in our own power, and neither gods nor men can take it away. The ties of family life are depicted with enthusiasm, and though the ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... worship meet, Meet the worship for the place; Contemplation's best retreat, Shrine ...
— Hymns for Christian Devotion - Especially Adapted to the Universalist Denomination • J.G. Adams
... immoderation. But not quite. Briefly, it works something like this. They have a limited number of monks—I suppose you'd call them—who spend their time at whatever moves them. At the arts, at scientific research, at religious contemplation—any religion will do—as students of anything and everything, and at the governing of Shangri-La. They make a point of enjoying the luxuries in moderation and aren't a severe drain on the rank and file citizens of ...
— Ultima Thule • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... Hume, 'led into the apprehension of invisible intelligent power by contemplation of the works of Nature, they could never possibly entertain any conception but of one single Being, who bestowed existence and order on this vast machine, and adjusted all its parts to one regular system.' Referring to ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... Lieutenant, I understood you were in Revonde, and took the advantage of your presence to put into effect a little plan which has been for some time in contemplation. I recollect having had the pleasure of meeting you not so long ago ...
— A Modern Mercenary • Kate Prichard and Hesketh Vernon Hesketh-Prichard
... and by a complete suspension of all his active powers to become absorbed and swallowed up in the Infinite.[130] Plato and his followers sought by an immediate abstraction to apprehend "the unchangeable and permanent Being," and, by a loving contemplation, to become "assimilated to the Deity," and in this way to attain the immediate consciousness of God. The Neo-Platonic mystic sought by asceticism and self-mortification to prepare himself for divine communings. He would contemplate the divine perfections ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... the desert-born, the Western Indian, forms an exhibit as little suited as the improved Arab horse to discussion and award at a session fraught with that "calm contemplation and poetic ease" which ought to mark the deliberations of the judges. How are the representatives of fifty-three tribes to be put through their paces? These poor fragments of the ancient population of the Union have, if we ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various
... gardens of Eden, of such extreme beauty that the mere act of living and breathing amongst their enchanting scenes, becomes a positive and real enjoyment. The heart seems to leap with delight, and the soul to be elevated, by the contemplation of those ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... breakfast-table every minute, to the silent distress of quiet little Major O'Neill, painted all sorts of handsome portraits, and agreeable landscapes, and cloud-clapped castles, each for her private contemplation, on the spreading canvas ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... pass under the gloomy gates that lead to the Plaza Mayor. This once magnificent square is now as squalid and forsaken as the Place Royale of Paris, though it dates from a period comparatively recent. The mind so instinctively revolts at the contemplation of those orgies of priestly brutality which have made the very name of this place redolent with a fragrance of scorched Christians, that we naturally assign it an immemorial antiquity. But a glance at the booby face of Philip III. on his round-bellied charger in the centre of the square ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... plants, afford instances of provisions of these and similar kinds. But as I hope I may have succeeded in leading some of my readers to see what abundant subjects of interest may be found in the contemplation of even the appendages of plants, I shall now take my leave, only strongly advising all who wish to find a country life profitable and agreeable, to endeavour to supply themselves with some simple natural pursuit, such as gardening or botany, either of which may ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 454 - Volume 18, New Series, September 11, 1852 • Various
... from a book which had been kept that what he gave us had been drawn chiefly from the rich experiences of his own life and the Gospels, supplemented by the writings of his favourite teacher, Schleiermacher. By contemplation, the consideration of the universe with the soul rather than with the mind, we should enter into close relations with God and become conscious of our dependence upon him, and this consciousness Middendorf with his teacher ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... that the scientific discoveries shall look in theistic directions just to satisfy the imperious though unconscious demands of his own soul. Some scientists are theists just because they are bound to be so, for the close contemplation of the entire situation in the material realm does not make for any adequate theistic verdict. It is hard indeed to believe that the nice adjustments of matter and force occur without the governance of a supervising intelligence. There are too many facts which suggest skill to ...
— Understanding the Scriptures • Francis McConnell
... her a sharp, sudden glance, and then fell again to the contemplation of his knotted brown hands that seemed, like all his equipment, informed with ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... process thus illustrated, and in the second quite to place me on unexpectedly good terms with the work itself. As I scan my list I encounter none the "history" of which embodies a greater number of curious truths—or of truths at least by which I find contemplation more enlivened. The thing done and dismissed has ever, at the best, for the ambitious workman, a trick of looking dead, if not buried, so that he almost throbs with ecstasy when, on an anxious review, the flush of life reappears. It is verily on recognising that flush on a whole side of "The ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... and neglecting the true vein of sentiment which so abounds in my heart. All my pleasure is still in mournful contemplation, but I have learned that the feelings are most refined when freed from low cares and personal discomforts. I was going to cite a letter I wrote to my oldest friend, the baron of Hohenfels. It was sketched out first in verse, but in that ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various
... without, perhaps, consciously analysing it, the company, the glow, the atmosphere which they found. One might take it, after all, as an augur of the better social order, for the things which they satisfied here, though sensory, were not evil. No evil could come out of the contemplation of an expensively decorated chamber. The worst effect of such a thing would be, perhaps, to stir up in the material-minded an ambition to arrange their lives upon a similarly splendid basis. In the last analysis, that would scarcely be called the fault ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... a tolerably clear conscience, so I fancied. Should I be discovered? That was the question. For what I could tell I might be entombed beneath the cargo and be unable to get out till I was starved to death. The thought was too dreadful for contemplation, and I tried to put it from me. I remembered how I had escaped from the old mill and the way I got out without any one ...
— Dick Cheveley - His Adventures and Misadventures • W. H. G. Kingston
... moments of her husband's departure. She stood perfectly still for some time, as though listening to his departing footsteps. Then she crossed the room and pressed the bell twice. Once more she listened. The change in her expression was wonderful. She was expectant, eager, thrilled with the contemplation of some imminent happening. Her vigil came suddenly to an end, as the door was opened and closed again a little abruptly. It was no servant who had obeyed her summons; it was Wingate who entered, unannounced ...
— The Profiteers • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... put it on—not without some diffident contemplation of the blank left by the middle finger and of the ink-stained edges ...
— Childhood • Leo Tolstoy
... infant heedlessness too soon exchanged for deep and anxious thought. The strange and romantic scheme of her mother, might confirm and perpetuate the painful view of life, which had intruded itself thus early on her contemplation. ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... poor mother, love! Yes; that is just it. Only let me have the worst placed steadily before my eyes, and the remedies, if any, proposed, or if none, the state of the case acknowledged, and I can bear the contemplation of almost any thing. I think it is not patience, but courage, that your poor mother wants, my child. Uncertainty—any thing that is vague—the evils of which are undefined, seems to swell into such terrific magnitude. I am like a poor frightened child, Catherine; the glimmering ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... consequently in most cases the plot fails in the performance, the dagger turns aside. Else we should all be chess-players—there would be none left to do the business of the world. Our statesmen would sit with pocket boards while the country went to the devil, our army would bury itself in chequered contemplation, our bread-winners would forget their wives in seeking after impossible mates. The whole world would be disorganised. I can fancy this abominable hypnotism so wrought into the constitution of men that the cabmen would go trying ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... promontory and reed-bed on the borders of a bay where a fisherman's boat is rocking on the swell. It is possible that a philosophic idea is intended to be suggested—the passage of the soul through the pleasant delights of earth to the contemplation of the infinite.'—Laurence Binyon, Painting in the Far East (1908), pp. 75-6. The section of the roll which has been chosen for reproduction here has already been reproduced in S.W. Bushell, Chinese Art (1910), ...
— Medieval People • Eileen Edna Power
... compliance with the commands of Louis himself, moreover, the bodyguard were under arms; and the unwonted movement in the immediate vicinity of his apartments was so evident, and withal so threatening in its aspect, that a rumour soon spread through the palace that some serious enterprise was in contemplation. ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 2 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... have come to regard a certain class of their fellow creatures as doomed by the Almighty to eternal and excruciating agonies, and when their theology directs their minds with intense and realizing earnestness to the contemplation of such agonies, the result will be an indifference to the suffering of those whom they deem the enemies of their God, as absolute as it is perhaps possible ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... and however unformed or incoherent were his literary projects, he possessed, in ample measure, even at this period, the great elements of future fame; viz. the habit of vigorous industry, and the power of sustained abstraction and contemplation. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... souls beyond the dark tide, over the lonely and shadowy ways, and through the fathomless abyss, to the very portals of eternal rest. She had almost forgotten the object which brought her out that morning, so absorbed was she in the contemplation of the scene she had witnessed; until on rising to leave the church after the divine rites were over, her bundle fell to her feet. She snatched it up, ashamed of her carelessness, and, slipping through the crowd, emerged once more into the street. Picking her way through snow and ice, ...
— May Brooke • Anna H. Dorsey
... this matter Master Leigh saw a way to break faith with profit. He had no conscience, but he loved as all rogues love to turn the tables upon a superior rogue. He would play Master Lionel most finely, most poetically false; and he found a deal to chuckle over in the contemplation of it. ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... support under those overwhelming afflictions by which the spirit is prostrated and subdued, when unaided by the influence of a purer faith and unsustained by its confidence in a diviner power. From the contemplation of the Buddhist all the awful and unending realities of a future life are withdrawn—his hopes and his fears are at once mean and circumscribed; the rewards held in prospect by his creed are insufficient to incite ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... that the pirates would put me to death. In the former, I ran a great risk of being hung because I was a pirate; or the boat might drift out to sea, and a lingering death would be our portion. Neither alternative afforded a pleasant subject of contemplation. ...
— Peter the Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston
... garland, these fair hands unwearied ply. To please me at the crystal mirror, here I deck me. But my sister Rachel, she Before her glass abides the livelong day, Her radiant eyes beholding, charm'd no less, Than I with this delightful task. Her joy In contemplation, as in ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... conceit as if she had been standing at the mirror admiring her own beauty. Selfish satisfaction is often found quite as much in mental attitudes of grief as in sensations of joy. Finally this woman has recognized for herself the conceit in her contemplation of her faults, and that she has not only allowed them to be positive while her attitude against them is negative; she has actually nursed them and been positive herself with their positiveness. Her attitude against them was therefore more ...
— Nerves and Common Sense • Annie Payson Call
... a blue-mould fancier, who by looking too long at a Stilton cheese, was at last completely overcome, by his eye exciting his appetite, till it became quite ungovernable; and unconscious of every thing but the mity object of his contemplation, he began to pick out, in no small portions, the primest parts his eye could select from ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner
... the field is bare, Some hermit lead me to his cell, Where Contemplation, lonely fair, With blessed content has chose ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... match are thine, Lord, from thy birth, of gifts divine, And now these spells of might shall cast Fresh radiance o'er the gifts thou hast." Then Rama duly touched the wave, Raised suppliant hands, bowed low his head, And took the spells the hermit gave, Whose soul on contemplation fed. From him whose might these gifts enhanced, A brighter beam of glory glanced: So shines in all his autumn blaze The Day-God of the thousand rays. The hermit's wants those youths supplied, As pupils use to holy guide. And then the night in ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... some appearance of its ancient dignity, made the dwelling and all in its vicinity wear an aspect of constraint and austerity. Festivity, joy and pleasure, seemed foreign to the purposes of its construction; silence, solemnity and contemplation were adapted to ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... house had had dealings with her owners, and that he must ascertain the fate of her wares. His good lady remained in charge of the mysterious little waif, over whom her tender heart yearned more and more, while her little boy hovered about in serene contemplation of the treasure he thought he had recovered. To him the babe seemed really his little sister; to his mother, if she sometimes awakened pangs of keen regret, yet she filled up much of the dreary void of ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... in the contemplation of them, but pleasure too. She felt at peace with the world. All trouble seemed far behind her. It was as if the great storm that had left them unharmed had been an ambassador from the powers above to assure her of their forbearance, protection, ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... of all the knowledge that he had, and the constant contemplation of the cold facts of the case, it seemed to him, as on a dozen occasions before since his lapse of memory, as if life were not so real as it seemed. Somewhere, down in the very fibre of him, was an assumption that England and Catholicism were irreconcilable things—that the domination ...
— Dawn of All • Robert Hugh Benson
... proceedings as to their public affairs, and that Mr. Apes, as far as we know, has acted honest and uprightly; and that he has done his duty to his Indian brethren, as far as he could consistently. And that he has duly made known his accounts, and appropriated the monies that was in contemplation for the Indian Meeting-house, for the Pequod tribe; and we also certify that said monies shall be ...
— Indian Nullification of the Unconstitutional Laws of Massachusetts - Relative to the Marshpee Tribe: or, The Pretended Riot Explained • William Apes
... had been hitherto either plunged in deep contemplation or in an incipient slumber, "insert, I say, these very words: 'And with the heat of the morning, and anxiety of so rapid a march, with a numerous enemy in his rear, the Emperor was so thirsty, as never in his life to think ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... careful pre-arrangement of proportions and interdependencies. But to carry beyond this point the analogy between the two arts would be fantastic and unhelpful. The one exists in space, the other in time. The one seeks to beget in the spectator a state of placid, though it may be of aspiring, contemplation; the other, a state of more or less acute tension. The resemblances between music and architecture are, as is well known, much more extensive and illuminating. It might not be wholly fanciful to call music a sort of middle term between ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... speaking and drew back a few steps to judge of the effect of his picture, becoming absorbed in contemplation for a moment, ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... affording glimpses, in the region of the back, of a corset, or a pair of stays, in colour a dead green. Being always in a state of gaping admiration at everything, and absorbed, besides, in the perpetual contemplation of her mistress's perfections and the baby's, Miss Slowboy, in her little errors of judgment, may be said to have done equal honour to her head and to her heart; and though these did less honour to the baby's head, which they were the occasional means of bringing ...
— The Cricket on the Hearth • Charles Dickens
... to have thought, high as the employment was, that it was not good, either for the heart or mind of man, to be always away from that intercourse with humanity and its affairs which is calculated to awaken and sustain the sympathies of life; and therefore turned to the contemplation of Him who was meek and lowly. And no countenance has been afforded to monks and hermits who retired from the world, though it even was to spend their lives in meditation and prayer; for Heaven had warned man, at an ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... her own imperfect righteousness. This view of Jesus was sweet and precious. He had become, not the Savior of the world, but her own Savior; he had died, not merely for the sins of the race, but for her sins; and in this sacred contemplation her soul found sweet relief. The torturing load of fears was gone; one sight of Christ had changed the heart and taken away its grief and sin. Like a liberated slave she rejoiced in perfect freedom, and her happy soul went out in joyful thanks to Him ...
— Daughters of the Cross: or Woman's Mission • Daniel C. Eddy
... gullible audience. Sir Francis made no direct allusion throughout the week-end, but, as they sat over their wine on the first night, he enquired spasmodically how old Eric was, how much money he had made during the last year and what literary ventures he had in contemplation. ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna
... beauty, opening their souls to a confessor, revealing all their secret emotions, their hopes, their disappointments, their fears, their failings, submitting to his questions, and hanging upon his words of acquittal or condemnation; surely this is a subject of contemplation full of awful interest, and on which it is impossible to be at ease where the mysterious intercourse is without a witness and without a check—but the consciences of two frail and fallible human beings. Well may ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... do his contemplating, and then get up and do his work, he would be in a better condition; he would be living a more normal and satisfactory life. If we in the Occident would take more time from the rush and activity of life for contemplation, for meditation, for idealization, for becoming acquainted with our real selves, and then go about our work manifesting the powers of our real selves, we would be far better off, because we would be living a more natural, a more normal life. ...
— What All The World's A-Seeking • Ralph Waldo Trine
... strength in the muscles of the face. Their eyes are more bright than should be eyes of happy men; they are, as it were, inured to sterility; there is nothing in them of that repose which we Westerners acquire from a continual contemplation of deep pastures and of innumerable leaves; they are at war, not only among themselves, but against the good earth; in a silent and powerful way ...
— Hills and the Sea • H. Belloc
... agreeable, or not, to his own experience,—a better guide, in all probability, than mere philosophy. The writer has his doubts upon the subject. But let every one judge for himself. For his part, he is convinced that frequent contemplation of death, though it certainly aids the mind in reasoning about it, does not lessen the apprehension of it, but the reverse: so that, did not some peculiar principle come to his aid, and seem indeed to acquire ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... was pulled in a skiff as close to the fall as possible, and in short performed duly all the observances that have been suggested and practised by curiosity or idleness; but in all these I found no sensation equal to a long quiet contemplation of the mass entire, not as viewed from the balconies of the hotel, but from some rocky point or wooded shade, where house and fence and man and all his petty doings were shut out, and the eye left calmly to gaze upon the awful scene, and the rapt mind to ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... who had made a favorable record as comptroller of the currency. Thus only two of Mr. Lincoln's original cabinet, Mr. Seward and Mr. Welles, were in office at the date of his second inauguration; and still another change was in contemplation. Mr. Usher of Indiana, who had for some time discharged the duties of Secretary of the Interior, desiring, as he said, to relieve the President from any possible embarrassment which might arise from the fact that two of his cabinet were from the same State, sent in his resignation, which Mr. Lincoln ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... and smell, and touch, and taste, that wafers and wine were actually the flesh and blood of a man that was crucified, with nails driven through his feet and hands, many hundred years ago. Then, rising into the contemplation of the divinity of the Saviour, he trampled under the feet of his eloquence a belief so contrary to the instincts and senses with which Infinite Wisdom has gifted his creatures; and bursting into ecstasy at ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... and conclude the sum of my conviction in this one sentence. Revealed religion (and I know of no religion not revealed) is in its highest contemplation the unity, that is, the identity or co-inherence, of subjective and objective. It is in itself, and irrelatively at once inward life and truth, and outward fact and luminary. But as all power manifests itself in the harmony ...
— Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit etc. • by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... tenderness. He had a sort of worship for her whilst he wounded her. He speaks of her after she is gone; of her wit, of her kindness, of her grace, of her beauty, with a simple love and reverence that are indescribably touching; in contemplation of her goodness his hard heart melts into pathos; his cold rhyme kindles and glows into poetry, and he falls down on his knees, so to speak, before the angel, whose life he had embittered, confesses his own wretchedness and unworthiness, and adores her ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the contemplation appeared to cheer him, for his look was brighter, and his voice had the old joyous ring in it when he spoke again. It was after a few minutes' silence deferentially observed by Hamilton, who seemed to follow and to respect the course of his ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... Never have I seen such a walking work of art. He was wont to say that had he been owned and his body cast up upon some savage land, the natives might have learned the whole of the blessed gospel from a contemplation of his carcass. Yet with sorrow I must say that the seaman's religion appeared to have all worked into his skin, so that very little was left for inner use. It had broken out upon the surface, like the spotted fever, but his system was clear of it elsewhere. He could swear in eleven languages ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... dear sister, to know it gives you such great joy to celebrate the Resurrection of our Lord," he replied. "Truly it is a blessed privilege to be able to lose one's self in the contemplation of holy things, and, forgetting the cares of this present life, rejoice in the hope of heaven, and be as one dead to every ...
— Sister Carmen • M. Corvus
... that, but I felt convinced that Miss Havisham too would not be understood; and although she was perfectly incomprehensible to me, I entertained an impression that there would be something coarse and treacherous in my dragging her as she really was (to say nothing of Miss Estella) before the contemplation of Mrs. Joe. Consequently, I said as little as I could, and had my face shoved ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... be saved, have fled from the world to that mountain, which is all full of saintly hermits who are serving the Lord, busy in diverse pursuits with most vivacious expressions. Some, reading and praying, are shown all intent on contemplation, and others, labouring in order to gain their livelihood, are exercising themselves in various forms of action. There is seen here among others a hermit who is milking a goat, who could not be more active or more lifelike in appearance than he is. ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Volume 1, Cimabue to Agnolo Gaddi • Giorgio Vasari
... his hands were sore, but he forgot everything in the contemplation of the magnificent fish he had captured. For as it lay there now, feebly opening and closing its gills, it was wonderfully like an ordinary gold-fish of enormous size, the orange-and-gold scale armour in which it was clad being so gorgeous that, in spite of his triumph in the capture, ...
— Rob Harlow's Adventures - A Story of the Grand Chaco • George Manville Fenn
... Bedlam of ideals; in knowledge feeding with the fox oftener than with the stork,—loving better the breadth of a fertilizing inundation than the depth of narrow artesian well; finding nothing too small for his contemplation in the markings of the grammatophora subtilissima, and nothing too large in the movement of the solar system towards the star Lambda of the constellation Hercules;—and the question is, whether there is anything left for me, ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... has put on "individuation" that his worshippers may escape from it. Mr. Wells's book teems with expressions—I have given many examples of them—which are wholly inapplicable to any metaphor, however galvanized into a semblance of life by ecstatic contemplation in the devotional mind. For example, when we are told that it is doubtful whether "God knows all, or much more than we do, about the ultimate Being," the mere assertion of a doubt implies the possibility of knowledge of a quite different order from any that exists ...
— God and Mr. Wells - A Critical Examination of 'God the Invisible King' • William Archer
... had evidently not an idea that he was being talked about; he was too preoccupied with the ecstasy of contemplation. At this moment Caroline Spencer came out of the house, bearing a coffee-pot on a little tray. I noticed that on her way from the door to the table she gave me a single quick, vaguely appealing glance. I wondered what it signified; I felt ...
— Four Meetings • Henry James
... interesting, Inspector," he declared, "even to divert my mind from the eternal contemplation of the Fu-Manchu problem. This would appear to be distinctly a case of an 'astral bell' such as we sometimes hear of ...
— The Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... quarter of a mile, and wisely, I think, abandoned it. To understand all its terrors, the place must be seen. Once slip, and you are gone for ever, past all human aid: the death is too frightful for contemplation.' ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 456 - Volume 18, New Series, September 25, 1852 • Various
... in the most humble objects, makes all around us resplendent and, if we refuse to see it, we are blinded by an unjust prejudice, or our minds are not open to the faculty of contemplation. ...
— Common Sense - - Subtitle: How To Exercise It • Yoritomo-Tashi
... unemployed, to come to the State for work; if in poverty, to come to the State for relief; if ignorant, to come to the State for education: but it strenuously resists the exercise by the State of its reciprocal claim on the service of the individual. It is engrossed by the contemplation of the rights of the individual and the duties of the State; it ignores the rights of the State and ...
— Freedom In Service - Six Essays on Matters Concerning Britain's Safety and Good Government • Fossey John Cobb Hearnshaw
... did not run out in voice or indecent eruptions, but filled the soul, as God does the universe, silently and without noise. It was refreshing, but composed, like the pleasantness of youth tempered with the gravity of age; or the mirth of a festival managed with the silence of contemplation. ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Vol. 2 (of 10) • Grenville Kleiser
... and then he endeavoured to reflect, like one who had a grave business in contemplation. The Santa Cruz confused his brain, but the Indian never entirely lost his presence of mind; or never, at least, so long as he could either ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... school. As far as concerns its logic, we had best pass it by. The Victorians needed logic only to drive away logicians, which was hardly necessary after Bernard had shut up the schools. As for its mysticism, all training is much alike in idea, whether one follows the six degrees of contemplation taught by Richard of Saint- Victor, or the eightfold noble way taught by Gautama Buddha. The theology of the school was still less important, for the Victorians contented themselves with orthodoxy only in the sense of caring as little for dogma as for dialectics; their thoughts ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... is like a bit of the Mediterranean. It takes the greys of the rain-days with a beauty and power of its own, and the mornings flash upon it. I call it the Other Shore, a structure of idealism forming upon it from much contemplation at the desk. The young people turn to it ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort
... It would seem that there was no faith, either in the angels, or in man, in their original state. For Hugh of S. Victor says in his Sentences (De Sacram. i, 10) that "man cannot see God or things that are in God, because he closes his eyes to contemplation." Now the angels, in their original state, before they were either confirmed in grace, or had fallen from it, had their eyes opened to contemplation, since "they saw things in the Word," according ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... fakeer, and thinks the beatitude of life lies in contemplation. Men fret and fuss and fume, and are for ever in haste; the toad ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... at the Bar in course of his speech began to use a simile of "the eagle soaring high above the mists of the earth, winning its daring flight against a midday sun till the contemplation becomes too dazzling for humanity, and mortal eyes gaze after it in vain." Here the orator was noticed to falter and lose the thread of his speech, and sat down after some vain attempts to regain it; the judge remarking: "The next time, ...
— Law and Laughter • George Alexander Morton
... had settled down to silent contemplation of the cheery fire, the men enjoying their pipes, Maggie Jean busy with her knitting. No sound disturbed the peaceful calm except the regular faint click ...
— Up in Ardmuirland • Michael Barrett
... look at his wife, he saw that she was quite absorbed in the contemplation of the sleeping child, which did not lessen his ill humour. He drew away her right hand, with which she was supporting its head that had fallen back: "Don't do that, don't tire yourself like that. It will sleep on even without that." ...
— The Son of His Mother • Clara Viebig
... "individuation" that his worshippers may escape from it. Mr. Wells's book teems with expressions—I have given many examples of them—which are wholly inapplicable to any metaphor, however galvanized into a semblance of life by ecstatic contemplation in the devotional mind. For example, when we are told that it is doubtful whether "God knows all, or much more than we do, about the ultimate Being," the mere assertion of a doubt implies the possibility of knowledge ...
— God and Mr. Wells - A Critical Examination of 'God the Invisible King' • William Archer
... such errors, the only safeguard is to be able, once in a way, to discard words for a moment and contemplate facts more directly through images. Most serious advances in philosophic thought result from some such comparatively direct contemplation of facts. But the outcome has to be expressed in words if it is to be communicable. Those who have a relatively direct vision of facts are often incapable of translating their vision into words, while those who possess the words have usually lost the vision. It is partly ...
— The Analysis of Mind • Bertrand Russell
... of the Brahmins explains itself in a sublime manner, concerning the unity and power of God, in these words found in the 2d chapter of the Shastah, 'The Eternal, absorbed in the contemplation of his own existence, resolved, in the fullness of time, to communicate his glory and his essence to beings capable of feeling and partaking his beatitude, as well as of contributing to his glory. The Eternal willed it, and they were. He formed them partly of his own essence, ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, - Volume I, No. 9. September, 1880 • Various
... of fright, and so was I, for I did not hear him go away; apparently he remained at the foot of the elm. After a good quarter of an hour, during which I lost myself in contemplation of the heavens, and battled with the waves of curiosity, I closed my widow and sat down on the bed to unfold the delicate bit of paper, with the tender touch of a worker amongst the ancient manuscripts at Naples. It felt redhot to my fingers. "What a horrible power this ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... extract from a French Critick: Or, if I may speak the language of my trade, as I opened these annotations with a Prologue from Roscommon, I shall drop the curtain with an Epilogue from Dacier. Another curtain now demands my attention. I am called from the Contemplation of Antient Genius, to sacrifice, with due respect, to Modern Taste: I am summoned from a review of the magnificent spectacles of Greece and Rome, to the rehearsal of a Farce at the ...
— The Art Of Poetry An Epistle To The Pisos - Q. Horatii Flacci Epistola Ad Pisones, De Arte Poetica. • Horace
... and still keeping me at her side (where I was well contented to stand, for I derived a child's pleasure from the contemplation of her face, her dress, her one or two ornaments, her white forehead, her clustered and shining curls, and beaming dark eyes), she proceeded to ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... you call that ten-feet drift in the pass a swindle? Is it in the chance of Hale getting back while we're here? That's real enough, isn't it? I say, Ned, did you ever give your unfettered intellect to the contemplation of THAT?" ...
— Snow-Bound at Eagle's • Bret Harte
... that the predominant note in Tuckerman's poetry is elegiac; rather is it a note of tender, wistful, and scrupulously accurate contemplation of the New England countryside, mingled with spiritual speculation. But as the volume closed with the elegiac poems, and as thereafter no more poems were published, it may be surmised that the poet's will to create was smothered in the poignant ripple of his personal sorrow. ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... from the contemplation of her position to her new views of London and modern life. The poverty and ignorance of which she read had seemed hateful to her. But her impulse—always the impulse of generous souls—was not to shrink away from this newly-discovered misery, but to ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... that he might find it impossible to perform the duties with which he had been entrusted, and therefore, when Lord John Russell wrote to him, he deprecated the measure in contemplation; and he rejoices sincerely that your Majesty has been most graciously pleased to countermand the order for the removal ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria
... religion in its culmination in the three figures of Dante, Francis of Assisi, and Thomas a Kempis. A Kempis shows religion fled from the active world with its strifes and temptations, sedulously cultivating a pure, devout, unworldly virtue; feeding on the contemplation of heavenly splendors and infernal horrors; self-centred and inglorious. The opposite type is Frances, a joyful prophet of glad tidings to the poor; ardent, sympathetic, heroic; touched with the beauty of nature and the appeal of the animal creation; exalting simplicity and poverty like an ancient ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... the time to see him was when, coming down from the high regions to which a moment before he had soared, he became once more the simple child adorned with goodness and every grace; taking an interest in all things, as if he were really a child. It was impossible then to refrain from the contemplation of this placid beauty, which, without taking away in the least from the admiration which it inspired, drew one toward him, and made him more accessible to one, and more familiar by lessening a little the distance which separated one from him. But, above all, he should ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... yet in absorbed contemplation of the aerial gambols of these many garments when to him came Mrs. Trapes, ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol
... Jimmy, lighting a fresh cigarette, addressed himself to the contemplation of this new complication in his affairs. It was quite true what Gentleman Jack or Joe or whatever the "boys" called him had said. To denounce him meant denouncing himself. Jimmy smoked thoughtfully. Not for the first time ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... settled that the newly wedded pair were, for a while at least, to reside at the cottage. It might have been imagined, therefore, that no great external changes were in contemplation; but it is astonishing, the amount of discussion, the amount of advising, consulting, and running to and fro, which can be made to result out of an apparently slight change in the relative position of two people ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... she waved her hand to him. Now that she had made her decision, and was really going up, she was not half so frightened as she had been in the contemplation of it. ...
— Tom Swift and his Air Scout - or, Uncle Sam's Mastery of the Sky • Victor Appleton
... structure was an immense cage, which was larger than any house, and entirely open to view. They walked round all four sides of it, and were enchanted with its beautiful occupants pants. Storks and flamingoes stood about, on one leg, motionless, as if absorbed in deep contemplation. Pelicans, with their strange bills, and ducks of most brilliant plumage waddled around and seemed to be entirely interested ...
— Marjorie's Busy Days • Carolyn Wells
... be helped: the sentiment of surrender, of sacrifice for one's neighbour, and all self-renunciation-morality, must be mercilessly called to account, and brought to judgment; just as the aesthetics of "disinterested contemplation," under which the emasculation of art nowadays seeks insidiously enough to create itself a good conscience. There is far too much witchery and sugar in the sentiments "for others" and "NOT for myself," for one not needing to be doubly ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... of the spirit, the spirit or activity in general, making of every act of the human spirit an act of will. Neither such metaphysical nor such metaphorical meaning is ours. For us, the will is, as generally accepted, that activity of the spirit, which differs from the mere theoretical contemplation of things, and is productive, not of knowledge, but of actions. Action is really action, in so far as it is voluntary. It is not necessary to remark that in the will to do, is included, in the scientific sense, also what is vulgarly called not-doing: the will to resist, to reject, ...
— Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic • Benedetto Croce
... titles they gave their pictures, accorded very well with the functions of art as from his diligent perusal of Ruskin he understood it; but here was something quite different: here was no moral appeal; and the contemplation of these works could help no one to lead a purer and a ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... of late the close ally of Davis; Cass, whom Lowell had pilloried as the typical weak-kneed Northerner who suffered himself to be made the lackey of the South; and Taney, who had denied that, in the contemplation of the American Constitution, the Negro was a man. It was Black, an old Jacksonian, who in the moment of peril held the nerveless hands of the President firm to the tiller. It was Dix, another such, who sent to New Orleans ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton
... from zootheism. Through contemplation of the strong the idea of strength arises, and a means is found for bringing the bear into analogy with thunder, with the sun, or with the avalanche-bearing mountain; through contemplation of the swift ...
— The Siouan Indians • W. J. McGee
... him with the apparently hopeless desire to erect a church in Rome in their honour. To Rome he came, persuaded of his righteous mission, to fail of course, after seven years of indefatigable effort. Back to Palermo then, to the contemplation of his beloved angels. And again they seemed to drive him to Rome. Scarcely had he returned when in a dream he seemed to see his ideal church among the ruins of the Baths of Diocletian, which had been built, as tradition said, by thousands ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... nature of man is so constituted as to feel certain affections upon the sight or contemplation of certain objects. Now the very notion of affection implies resting in its object as an end. And the particular affection to good characters, reverence and moral love of them, is natural to all those who have any degree of real goodness in themselves. This ...
— Human Nature - and Other Sermons • Joseph Butler
... conscience. It had been so long since he had experienced remorse that he believed himself incapable of it. But suddenly a fierce and unendurable pang seized him. To a man who had been long accustomed to feeling nothing in the contemplation of his deeds, but a dull consciousness of unworthiness, this sharp and terrible attack of shame and guilt was startling indeed. He could not understand it. The pain seemed disproportionate to the sin; but he could not resist the repugnance and horror with which it filled ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... man of my own nomination and confidence. I avow the principle, and think no government can subsist without it. The punishment of the Rajah made no part of my design in Mr. Fowke's removal or Mr. Markham's appointment, nor was his punishment an object of my contemplation at the time I removed Mr. Fowke to appoint Mr. Markham: an appointment of my own choice, and a signal to notify the restoration of my own authority; as I had before removed Mr. Fowke and appointed Mr. ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... with the lamplit multitude peering, Amanda in a thousand bright settings, in a thousand various dresses. She had had love; it had been glorious, it was still glorious, but her love-making became now at times almost perfunctory in the contemplation of these approaching delights and ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... membership with the Church and entitled to all its privileges; and undoubtedly security is one of them. That is what you want to do, Miss Eleanor; and I am truly rejoiced that your mind is setting itself to the contemplation of its duties—and responsibilities. In the station you are preparing to occupy, the head of all this neighbourhood—Wiglands and Rythdale both—it is most important, most important, that your example should be altogether blameless and your influence thrown altogether on the right ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume I • Susan Warner
... that man believes in a God, who feels himself in the presence of a Power which is not himself, and is immeasurably above himself, a Power in the contemplation of which he is absorbed, in the knowledge of which he finds safety and happiness. Natural ...
— Beautiful Thoughts • Henry Drummond
... might lead to their being accused of having received a refugee from Marseilles, a word which in itself had small significance, but which in the mouth of an enemy might be fatal. Fears for the future being thus aroused by my recollections of the past, I decided to give up the contemplation of a drama which might become redoubtable, asked to bury myself in the country with the firm intention of coming back to Nimes as soon as the white flag should once more float from ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... spoke, two guitar-players, who accompanied the dancers, began twanging their instruments; and the young men, absorbed in contemplation of the graceful and luxuriant forms of the two female dancers, paid no attention to his entreaties and warnings. Hastily gathering up his bank, he packed it into a box, and left the saloon with ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... the smoke-clouds trailed like the wings of gigantic birds slowly balancing themselves. And waves of white light rolled up the valley as if jealous of the red, flashing furnaces. An odour of iron and cinders poisoned the air, and after some moments of contemplation which seemed to draw them closer together, Mr. ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... vegetables. . . . Mankind reduced to mechanics. . . . No useless operations that would not produce immediate results. . . . And the people who heralded this awful idea were the very philosophers and idealists who had once given contemplation and reflection the first place in ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... whose generous hospitality could not sweeten the bread of charity nor ease the steps of a patron's court to the proud exile. Dante could not have been easy to live with upon any terms. "Eh, puir fellow! he looks like a verra ill-tempered mon," quoth Carlyle once after a long contemplation of the poet's portrait. He played the part of Mentor, and a very morose one, to the splendid, gallant, good-natured prince and his gay court, and Can Grande seems to have derived the same sort of diversion from his diatribes as from the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... the long drawing-room into which they both drifted after Sir Isaac had washed the mould from his hands. She went to a French window, gathered courage, it seemed, by a brief contemplation of the garden, and ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... butchers weighed their wares with blood-stained hands, and to the market-place, where the high, pointed, and variegated Gothic fountain stood. There he stood still before a house, a narrow, simple house, like many others, with an openwork gable of curving lines, and became lost in contemplation of it. He read the name-plate on the door, and let his eyes rest a while on each window. Then ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... form; much less can the pencil paint; nor can the soul of painting, poetry, describe an angel so exquisitely, so elegantly lovely!—But I will not by anticipation pacify thy impatience. Although the subject is too hallowed for profane contemplation, yet shalt thou have the whole before thee as it passed: and this not from a spirit wantoning in description upon so rich a subject; but with a design to put a bound to thy roving thoughts. It will be iniquity, greater than a Lovelace was ever guilty ...
— Clarissa, Volume 5 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... has not yet been said on it. It has theoretical bearings of immense importance; for our conception of the process of evolution will be shaped according to the belief that acquired characters are or are not inherited. Herbert Spencer went so far as to say, "Close contemplation of the facts impresses me more strongly than ever with two alternatives—either that there has been inheritance of acquired characters, or there has been no evolution." But its practical bearings are no less momentous. Again to quote Spencer: "Considering the width and depth ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson
... M'Neil 'convinced that, from external creation, no right conclusion can be drawn concerning the moral character of God,' and that 'creation is too deeply and disastrously blotted in consequence of man's sin, to admit of any satisfactory result from an adequate contemplation of nature.' [42:1] We have a Gillespie setting aside the Design Argument, on the ground that the reasonings by which it is supported are 'inapt' to show such attributes as infinity, omnipresence, free agency, omnipotency, eternality, or unity,' belong in any way to God. On this latter ...
— Superstition Unveiled • Charles Southwell
... carnage going on. Captain Curey, for example, one of the bravest officers of the garrison, who had been driven to take up arms by the sufferings of his countrymen, although he had naturally a horror of bloodshed, was subject to fits of melancholy at the contemplation of these horrors. Brave in the extreme, he led his men in every sortie, in every desperate struggle. Fighting without defensive armour he was always in the thick of the battle, and many of the Spaniards fell before his sword. ...
— By Pike and Dyke: A Tale of the Rise of the Dutch Republic • G.A. Henty
... whole is obvious. In three cycles of speeches the problem of innocent suffering is fully developed and the current solutions presented. In conclusion the voice of Jehovah comes to Job calling him forth from himself to the contemplation of the larger universe which manifests ...
— The Makers and Teachers of Judaism • Charles Foster Kent
... and in Truth only valuable, Part of Mankind, have a Turn for one sort of Business or other, but with great variety of Taste. Some are addicted to deep Thought and Contemplation: Some to the abstracted Speculations of Metaphysicks; some to the evident Demonstrations of the Mathematicks; some to the History of Nature, built upon true Narration, or accurate Observations and Experiments: Some to the Invention ...
— 'Of Genius', in The Occasional Paper, and Preface to The Creation • Aaron Hill
... antique Rome! Rich reliquary Of lofty contemplation left to Time By buried centuries of pomp and power! At length—at length—after so many days Of weary pilgrimage and burning thirst, (Thirst for the springs of lore that in thee lie,) I kneel, an altered and an humble man, Amid thy shadows, and so drink within My very soul thy ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... all down in an alley where nobody saw him: then going down another street or two, he walked till he came to one of the city gates, and pursuing his way through the suburbs, which were very extensive, at length reached a lonely spot, where he stopped for a time to execute the design he had in contemplation, never caring for his horse which he had left at the khan, but thinking himself perfectly compensated by the treasure he ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... the sequel up to this date. It was one of the most strenuous of the early disputants against the "liberal" opinions[227:1] who remarked in his later years, concerning the Unitarian saints, that it seemed as if their exclusive contemplation of Jesus Christ in his human character as the example for our imitation had wrought in them an exceptional beauty and Christlikeness of living. As for the Universalists, the record of their fidelity, as a body, to the various interests of social morality is not surpassed by that ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... jetty tallow rather than earth, and his progress was slow and toilsome. The sky became more and more obscured: the sun faded to a ghastly moon, then to a white blotch in the gray vault, and finally retired in disgust. Indeed, there was nothing in the landscape worth his contemplation. Dead flats of black, bristling with short corn-stalks, flats of brown grass, a brown belt of low woods in the distance,—that was all the horizon inclosed: no embossed bowl, with its rim of sculptured hills, its round of colored pictures, but a flat earthen pie-dish, over which the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... side, within a yard of each other, in silent contemplation of these things, during I don't know how many long and, for John, delicious seconds. Yes, he owned it to himself; it was delicious to feel her standing there beside him, in silent communion with him, ...
— My Friend Prospero • Henry Harland
... down to the eyebrows, resembled that of a Madonna—with her children round her, Lord Newhaven as usual somewhat out of focus in the background; and Hugh, young, handsome, devoted, heartbroken, and ennobled for life by the contemplation ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... the eight per cent of his coupon bonds. The shears of Atropos were not more fatal to human life than the long scissors which cut the last coupon to the lean proprietor, whose slice of dry toast it served to flatter with oleomargarine. Do you wonder that my thoughts took the poetical form, in the contemplation of these changes and their melancholy consequences? If the entire poem, of several hundred lines, was "declined with thanks" by an unfeeling editor, that is no reason why you should not hear a verse ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... heart as well as with others, what among the good offices of various works of piety would most please the Almighty, and would be more beneficial to the Church Militant. And lo! there soon occurred to our contemplation a host of unhappy, nay, rather of elect scholars, in whom God the Creator and Nature His handmaid planted the roots of excellent morals and of famous sciences, but whom the poverty of their circumstances so oppressed that before the frown of adverse fortune the seeds of excellence, ...
— The Philobiblon of Richard de Bury • Richard de Bury
... made on the plea of conformity to the fashions of the world; that such deviation bespeaks the beginning of an unstable mind; and, if not noticed, may lead into many evils. They therefore, who consider dress in this point of view, will never fall into any errors of mind in their contemplation of this subject. But if there are members, on the other hand, who place virtue in the colour and shape of their cloathing, as some of the Jews did in the broad phylacteries on their garments, they will place it in lifeless appearances and forms, and bring their minds under vassalage to a false ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... tremendous sea had swept everything from the decks—the vessel was a wreck, driving as the storm might chance to direct. In the midst of this devastation, I looked around me, and the only object which presented itself to my mind, as worthy of contemplation, was the tomb which contained the remains of Eugenia and her child. To that ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... rapidly with time as in the United States, there is scarcely a limit to the wealth that may be acquired by corporations, religious or otherwise, if allowed to retain real estate without taxation. The contemplation of so vast a property as here alluded to, without taxation, may lead to sequestration without constitutional ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... manly qualities for twenty times his good looks, and a thought of envy never crossed my mind on the subject. I fancied it might be well enough for a parson to be a little delicate, and a good deal handsome; but for one who intended to knock about the world as I had it already in contemplation to do, strength, health, vigour, courage and activity, were much more to be ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... howling whimper—a noise as of an animal wounded to death, according to the Freiherr's previous description of it to the Justitiarius. The latter shuddered, for the words which the old man murmured between his teeth sounded like, "Blood for gold." Of all this the Freiherr, absorbed in the contemplation of the treasure before him, had heard not the least. Daniel tottered in every limb, as if shaken by an ague fit; approaching the Freiherr with bowed head in a humble attitude, he kissed his hand, and drawing his handkerchief across ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... fireworks. Oh, it will be a celebrazione. My cousins from Messina will be here, the bishop, many fine people. I—I am more excited than Martel. I can scarcely wait." The girl's face mirrored her emotion and her eyes were as deep as the sea. She seemed for the moment very far away, uplifted in contemplation of the great change so soon to occur in her life, and Norvin began to suspect her of a tremendous depth of feeling. Unknown even to herself she was smouldering; unawakened fires were stirred by the consciousness of coming wifehood. Out here in the sun she was more tawny than ever, ...
— The Net • Rex Beach
... were accustomed to meet at a place intermediate between their retreats on Mount Cassino and at Plombariola, and to spend the night together in spiritual conversation and communion on the joys of heaven. Three days after their last interview, Scholastica died in her solitude. Benedict, rapt in contemplation on his mount at that moment, is said to have seen the soul of his sister ascend to heaven in the shape of a dove. He immediately sent for her body, and had it laid, with tender and solemn ceremonies, in the tomb which he had previously prepared for himself. The friendship of Tasso and his ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... girl—not at all like other girls. Or the man may be an old man who will live in perfect comfort if only his brain will not interminably run round and round in a circle of grievances, apprehensions, and fears which no amount of contemplation ...
— The Human Machine • E. Arnold Bennett
... Jerusalem was taken by the British forces under command of General Allenby. During 1918 all Palestine was freed. September 20, 1918, Nazareth, the boyhood home of Jesus, was taken. The future of Palestine with its wealth of Biblical history is a wonderful theme for contemplation. Given the blessings of a twentieth century government there is no reason why Palestine should not once more become a land "flowing with milk ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... greatest danger. He brought out a publication that would do honor to the most celebrated name. The whole kingdom must bear witness to its effect, by the reception they gave it. Poor in everything but genius and philosophy, he had no property at stake, no family to fear for; but descending from the contemplation of wisdom, and abandoning the ornaments of fancy, he humanely undertook the task of conveying duty and instruction to the lowest class of the people. If I did not know him (continued Mr. Grattan) to be a Christian clergyman, I should suppose him by his works to ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... time into an unromantic world; hands clasped round her upraised knees, her wide eyes gazing past the bluebells and the beech-leaves at some fanciful inner vision of it all; lost in it, as Roy was lost in contemplation of ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... as I have told it you, This tale of mutual extermination, To minds perplexed with threats of what comes next, Perhaps may furnish food for contemplation. ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... read in an old epistle of Cutbert moonke of the same house vnto Cuthwine, that the said Beda lieng in his death-bed, translated the gospell of saint Iohn into English, and commanded his brethren to be diligent in reading and contemplation of good bookes, and not to exercise themselues with fables and friuolous matters. Finallie he was buried in the abbeie of Geruie, distant fiue miles from Wiremouth, an abbeie also in the north parts, not far from ...
— Chronicles (1 of 6): The Historie of England (6 of 8) - The Sixt Booke of the Historie of England • Raphael Holinshed
... was a conspiracy to force me back from my pretensions by subjecting me to the contemplation of my bare self and actual condition. Had there been, I should have suffered from less measured strokes. The unconcerted design to humiliate inferiors is commonly successfuller ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... crystal. This antique chronometer occupied the central place on the mantel-piece, its gliding sands, though voiceless, for ever whispering of ebbing time and everlasting peace. "Passing away, passing away," seemed continually issuing from each meeting cone. I have no doubt the contemplation of this ancient, solemn instrument, which old Father Time is always represented as grasping in one unclenching hand, while he brandishes in the other the merciless scythe, had a lasting influence ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... usual seat by the fireplace, seemed to have withdrawn from the others, absorbed as she was in contemplation of the chair which the absent Morano still stubbornly left unoccupied. Chatting and laughing in front of the sofa on which sat Benedetta and Celia were Dario, Pierre, and Narcisse Habert, the last of whom had begun to twit the young Prince, having met him, so he asserted, a few days previously, ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... The great trees enlaced with one another over my head, and the sunshine stole through in patches as bright as diamonds, and hardly bigger. I was enchanted with the place, and, finding a felled tree-trunk, propped my back against it, and stretching my legs out gave myself up to undisturbed contemplation of the solemn beauty of the woods and to the comfort of a good cigar. And when the cigar was finished and I had (I suppose) inhaled as much beauty as I could, I went off into the most delightful sleep, regardless of my train ...
— The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope
... thought, no hermetically scaled seclusion, except, possibly, that of the grave, into which the disturbing influences of this war do not penetrate. Of course, the general heart-quake of the country long ago knocked at my cottage-door, and compelled me, reluctantly, to suspend the contemplation of certain fantasies to which, according to my harmless custom, I was endeavoring to give a sufficiently lifelike aspect to admit of their figuring in a romance. As I make no pretensions to statecraft or soldiership, ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 6, June, 1886, Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 6, June, 1886 • Various
... only growing pains," Mrs. Caldwell replied with a satisfied air, as if to name the trouble were to ease it. And so Beth's legs ached on unrelieved, and, when they kept her awake, Kitty became the object of her contemplation. The sides of the crib were like the seat of a cane-bottomed chair, and Beth had enlarged one of the holes by fidgeting at it with her fingers. This was her look-out station. A night-light had been conceded to her nervousness at the instance ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... not have leisure to take copies, and yet am willing to have the whole subject before me, for my own future contemplation, I must insist upon a return of my letters some time hence. Mr. Lovelace knows that this is one of my conditions; and ...
— Clarissa Harlowe, Volume 9 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... suspension of all his active powers to become absorbed and swallowed up in the Infinite.[130] Plato and his followers sought by an immediate abstraction to apprehend "the unchangeable and permanent Being," and, by a loving contemplation, to become "assimilated to the Deity," and in this way to attain the immediate consciousness of God. The Neo-Platonic mystic sought by asceticism and self-mortification to prepare himself for divine communings. He would contemplate the divine perfections in himself; and in an ecstatic ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... into two kinds, symbolism of colour and symbolism of form. Of colours, BLACK typifies grief and death; BLUE, hope, love of divine works, divine contemplation, piety, sincerity; PALE BLUE, power, Christian prudence, love of good works, serene conscience; GOLD, glory and power; GREEN, faith, immortality, resurrection, gladness; PALE GREEN, baptism; GREY, tribulation; PURPLE, justice, ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... affairs are. He is not like a careful man bred in a counting-house, and by the Directors put into an office of the highest trust on account of the regularity of his affairs; he is like one buried in the contemplation of the stars, and knows nothing of the things in this world. It was, then, on account of an idea of his great integrity that the Company put him into this situation. Since that he has thought proper to justify himself, not by clearing himself of receiving bribes, but by saying that no ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... lost all note of time. All day from early dawn, and far into the night, I was to be found peering through that wonderful lens. I saw no one, went nowhere, and scarce allowed myself sufficient time for my meals. My whole life was absorbed in contemplation as rapt as that of any of the Romish saints. Every hour that I gazed upon the divine form strengthened my passion,—a passion that was always overshadowed by the maddening conviction that, although I could gaze on her at will, she never, never ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various
... the ready answer, and so he "had expected to hear it was; all the best opere Greche now come from that neighbourhood." We made no remark; there was a pause; we watched the countenance of the mezzano; he seemed to be getting more and more absorbed in the contemplation of the little Venus, till, after taking his time, while he appeared oblivious of time, his pent-up enthusiasm at the sight of charms which rivet his attention, but are beyond his powers of expression, finds ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... things! Within a few years I shall be dead—and how happy will it then be, if I have resisted every temptation to the alluring pleasures of this life!" The happiness of a peaceful death occupied her contemplation for near an hour; but at length, every virtuous and pious sentiment this meditation inspired, served but to remind her of the many sentences she had heard from her guardian's lips upon the same subject—her thoughts were again fixed on him, and she could ...
— A Simple Story • Mrs. Inchbald
... painting. Their invention, if one may call it so, was one of the very highest moment in art. Those lovely creations, so precisely drawn up to a certain point, so elusive beyond it, raised the feeling for pure beauty into a wholly ideal plane. The deepest longings of men were satisfied by the contemplation of a paradise in which we should be even as they. In that mystical portraiture of the invisible world an answer—perhaps the only answer—was found to the demand for an ideal of beauty. That remarkable saying preserved by S. Clement, ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
... dusk Of ages Contemplation turns her view, To mark, as from its infancy, the world Peopled again from that mysterious shrine That rested on the top ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... hate: Kites, hawks, and wolves deserve their fate. Do not we just abhorrence find Against the toad and serpent kind? But envy, calumny, and spite, Bear stronger venom in their bite. Thus every object of creation Can furnish hints to contemplation; 70 And from the most minute and mean, A virtuous mind can morals glean.' 'Thy fame is just,' the sage replies; 'Thy virtue proves thee truly wise. Pride often guides the author's pen, Books as affected are as men: But he who studies nature's laws, From certain ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... and, with what fancy I can scarcely imagine now, the curtains of my bed as well. Possibly it was with some notion of having one place to which, if the worst came to the worst, I might retreat for safety. Again I approached the window, and after standing for some time in contemplation of the pendulum, I set it in ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... it for him that you disturb my delightful solitude?" asked the princess, somewhat reproachfully. "Is this Count Ostermann, is this whole miserable realm of so much importance to me as the sweet contemplation of a letter from my friend? When I am reading his letter it seems to me that my beloved himself is at my side, and therefore you must clearly see that I cannot receive Count Ostermann, as Lynar is ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... advantage of it to visit the great temple of Kamakura, and to inspect the greatest artistic monument of Japan, the bronze image of Buddha. It is a sitting statue, with folded hands and eyes closed, as if absorbed in mystic contemplation of his own excellence as a manifestation of deity, and careless of the sorrows and sins of the world. The great bronze image is fifty feet high, but it is hollow. We entered it, climbed up by ladders to its ...
— A Tour of the Missions - Observations and Conclusions • Augustus Hopkins Strong
... much surprised to hear that his latter end was a subject of dispassionate contemplation to the little Frenchman. No subject was more remote from his own thoughts. He was in high feather, the hour was fast approaching which was to witness his triumph and his revenge; the gag would soon be taken from his mouth, ...
— Half a Hero - A Novel • Anthony Hope
... rapt in the contemplation of my own ingenuity in having thus brilliantly attained my goal, when a stealthy noise in the next room roused me from my trance and brought up vividly to my mind the awful risks which I was running at this moment. I turned like an animal at bay to see ...
— Castles in the Air • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... From sulky contemplation of his brown boots and leggings, he looked at her. His eyes, of a light yet dense blue, were widely opened. 'What makes you think that? ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG
... my dear Glancon, you must apply in all its parts to our former statements, by comparing the region which the eye reveals, to the prison house, and the light of the fire therein to the power of the sun: and if, by the upward ascent and the contemplation of the upper world, you understand the mounting of the soul into the intellectual region, you will hit the tendency of my own surmises, since you desire to be told what they are; though, indeed, God only ...
— Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays • Bertrand Russell
... the storm like a rainbow, and like a rainbow's, its two extremities were lost in clouds—the clouds of birth and death. At last he roused himself from this inward contemplation, and lifted a pale but tranquil face. Then he went to the glass and arranged his hair. His strange characteristics never left him. The affianced of Death, he was adorning himself to meet ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - MURAT—1815 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... speaks, and which we everywhere see manifesting itself in nature? Surely this inquiry is not one to be superciliously set aside by the materialists, after the failure of their uranological expedition, on the ground that it does not furnish food enough for scientific contemplation, without such physiological fancies as their specialists have been giving us in the shape of force-correlations and ...
— Life: Its True Genesis • R. W. Wright
... much!" Strether helplessly sighed. "But you don't," he went on as if to get quickly away from the contemplation of that doom, "answer my ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... of home, to be regarded by woman, is that it affords room for the practice of habitual Disinterestedness. A selfish man is an object of painful contemplation. How much more is this defect to be deplored in woman. She, whose nature, so ardent and susceptible, prompts to an almost instinctive kindness, cannot fail in this quality, without shedding a blight on her ...
— The Young Maiden • A. B. (Artemas Bowers) Muzzey
... Experts! No faith in them—never had! Miners, lawyers, theologians, cowardly lot—pays them to be cowardly. When they have n't their own axes to grind, they've got their theories; a theory's a dangerous thing. [He loses himself in contemplation of the papers.] Now my theory is, you 're in strata here of what ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... were on the arm of his chair, and he had placed the tips of his fingers together, wearing an expression of such absorbed contemplation that Mount Dunstan ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... civil and agreeable; in sense and temper he was undoubtedly superior to his wife, but not of powers, or conversation, or grace, to make the past, as they were connected together, at all a dangerous contemplation; though, at the same time, Anne could believe, with Lady Russell, that a more equal match might have greatly improved him; and that a woman of real understanding might have given more consequence to his character, and more usefulness, rationality, and elegance to his habits and pursuits. ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... up and down absorbed in the marked contemplation of the ship's fore and aft trim; but when I saw him squat on his heels in the slush at the very edge of the quay to peer at the draught of water under her counter, I said to myself, "This is the ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... amateurish and imperfect, and the reserve which we had placed upon them was quite out of all proportion to their merit. It must surely be a mistake! We followed Isobel across the room. A little elderly gentleman was sitting before a desk, engaged in the leisurely contemplation of a small open ledger. Isobel had halted in front of him. There was a delicate flush of pink on her cheeks, and her eyes ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... by Guido, finely coloured, with much fine expression—but the subject is very horrible, and it seemed deficient in strength—at least, you require the highest ideal energy, the most poetical and exalted conception of the subject, to reconcile you to such a contemplation. There was a Jesus Christ crucified, by the same, very fine. One gets tired, indeed, whatever may be the conception and execution of it, of seeing that monotonous and agonised form for ever exhibited in one prescriptive attitude of torture. ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... alliance in the event of immediate general war, which had probably been made him by both sides. We replied to it after the Cabinet (No. 68): "We cannot enter into hypothetical engagements or make arrangements in contemplation of war between friendly Powers now at peace. The Sultan must be aware that Germany is the most powerful military nation on the Continent, and that she has no ambitious views against Turkey. Strongly advise the Sultan not to enter into entangling engagements." This whole story of the ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... observed, had watched the struggle from its commencement to its close with almost as much interest as her enthusiastic son and heir; and Mr Meldrum had much difficulty in tearing the little girl away from her rapt contemplation ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson
... listening in our summer-house, upon St. Swithun's feast, while my dear brother-in-law disputed with Mr. Grylls upon action and contemplation—which of them was the properer end of man. I thought then that each of them, though they talked up and down and at large, was in truth defending his own temperament: and, because I loved them both, that neither needed defending. For my own part, the small daily cares of Constantine have stolen away ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... to allow attention to be diverted from his message, he continued his discourse with such fervour that the people soon forgot the interrupter, and Bones forgot them and himself and his friend, in contemplation of the "Great Salvation." ...
— Post Haste • R.M. Ballantyne
... in the working-out of his ideas. Yet, never in art has a hallucination been thus set before us with such uncompromising reality. The sombre, luxurious decor, the voluptuous silhouette of the dancing girl, the hieratic pose of the Tetrarch, even the aureoled head of John, are forgotten in the contemplation of Salome, who is become cataleptic at sight of the apparition. Arrested her attitude her flesh crisps with fear. Her face is contracted into a mask of death. The lascivious dance seems suspended in midair. To have painted so impossible ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... back from the road to give room for two small tables in front. At one of these tables a man was already sitting, so I took possession of the other and called for a bottle of wine. I then sat there, slowly sipping, with my eyes on the chateau, hoping that by contemplation thereof, or perhaps by some occurrence thereabout, I might arrive at some idea of how to proceed. The drawbridge was not up, but the gates were closed. From where I sat, I could see the gate towers, a part of the outer wall, the turreted top ...
— The Bright Face of Danger • Robert Neilson Stephens
... go from the soul outward. Gift is contrary to the law of the universe. Serving others is serving myself. I must absolve me to myself.' And what is myself? Let Fichte answer. 'I affirm that in what we call the knowledge or the contemplation of things, it is always ourselves that we know or contemplate: in every sentiment of consciousness it is only modifications of ourselves that we feel.' And again: 'The universe lives. From it arises a marvelous harmony ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... than transmute, to move us by beauty at least as much as by truth. What we look for so wistfully in each other is the raw material of poetry. We can make the finished article for ourselves, given enough matter; and indeed the poetry which is imagined in contemplation is apt to be much finer than that which has passed through the claws of prosody and syntax. The fact, to be short with it, is that literature has an eye upon the consumer. Whether it is marketable or not, it is intended for the public. Now no ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... accompanied with biographical notices and illustrative notes, being a desideratum in Scottish literature, permit me to ask, through the medium of your entertaining and useful "NOTES AND QUERIES," if such publications be in contemplation by any of the various literary societies, or individual member thereof, in this kingdom; and if so, are ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 64, January 18, 1851 • Various
... watcher, as late into the night he sat gazing into the flaring flame of that element, in which many a sorrowful heart, in its agony, seems to find a parallel of the torture it endures, and to find a saddened pleasure in the contemplation. But at last the watcher turned to his rude couch, and only the radiance of the lamp, diffused through the opaline walls of the hut, gave evidence of the presence of human beings in that desolate, ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall
... improvement of her realm. This could only be done, or could best be done, in Holland. His life there was spent as usual in the slavery of proof-sheets, tempered by daily bursts of conversation, rhapsody, discussion, and dreamy contemplation. He made the acquaintance of a certain Bjoernstaehl, a professor of oriental languages at the university of Lund in Sweden, and a few pages in this obscure writer's obscure book contain the only glimpse that we have of the philosopher on his travels.[89] Diderot was as ecstatic in ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... thought, but not for long. He had loved Jacqueline Churchill truly, and her happiness was more to him than his own. When, presently, he reached the consideration of her in that darkened country, moving forever over ash and cinder beneath an empty, leaden heaven, he found the contemplation intolerable. A tenderness crept into his heart, divine enough as things go in the heart of man. The summer-house mocked him still, and the image of Rand walked with armed foot through every chamber of his brain, but he wished no worse for Jacqueline than unending light and love. After the first ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... for hours, buried in the contemplation of these two hundred and forty masterpieces. The conservator never ceased urging me to be careful when he saw me mix them up too much in my efforts to compare them. How astonished I was to find in the painter who, with mighty hand, had modelled ...
— Rembrandt • Josef Israels
... the annals of Salem Village, though frequently referred to, has not yet been presented for your contemplation. I shall hold it up and keep it in your view by a somewhat detailed description, not only because it is necessary to a full understanding of our subject, but because it is good to gaze upon a life of virtue; ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... ascribed to him all my proficiency in the higher branches of knowledge. I begged, therefore, to recommend him as a friend calculated to direct the studies of Miss Somerville; to lead her mind, by degrees, to the contemplation of abstract principles, and to produce habits of philosophical analysis; "which," added I, gently smiling, "are not often cultivated by young ladies." I ventured to hint, in addition, that he would find Mr. Glencoe a most valuable and interesting ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... of the matters in which old bachelors are wiser than married men, because they have time for more general contemplation. Your fine critic of woman must never shackle his judgment by calling one woman his own. But, as an example of what I was saying, that pretty Methodist preacher I mentioned just now told me that she had preached ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... really wonderful jig dancing, was diverting Anastasia's thoughts, and the comfortable savings attached, from Barney, who, though doubtless a sober man and far more durable in many ways, is much less interesting an object for the daily contemplation of ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright
... Martin on the day of which we now write. Dick, as he stood at the helm, with stern visage, bloodshot eyes, and dissipated look, was not a pleasant object of contemplation, but as he played a prominent part in the proceedings of that memorable day, we are bound to draw attention to him. Although he had spent a considerable portion of the night with his skipper in testing the quality of ...
— The Lively Poll - A Tale of the North Sea • R.M. Ballantyne
... every pain He bore, He put away from Him happiness as the aim and end of man. He reduced it to its true position of a possible accessory and issue of man's highest fulfilment of life—an issue, the contemplation of which might be of some avail as the being first awoke to its nobler capabilities, but which, the more the life went on towards realisation, passed the more away ...
— The Ethics of George Eliot's Works • John Crombie Brown
... solar respiration, from its heating nature; while the left respiration is termed the lunar respiration, from its cooling character. The susumna respiration is called the shambhu-nadi. During the intermediate respiration the human mind should be engaged in the contemplation of the ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... initiated—the former in old age, the latter in youth—more than five thousand years before the story opens. Thus Mejnour remains for ever a vigorous old man; while Zanoni, his pupil, enjoys perpetual youth. Mejnour is purely intellectual, and spends his life in contemplation; while Zanoni, though he must avoid love and friendship which are unknown to the passionless Intelligences, ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... written home from Leipzig. Nothing reveals more with respect to ourselves, than when we again see before us that which has proceeded from us years before, so that we can now consider ourselves as an object of contemplation. But, of course, I was as yet too young, and the epoch which was represented by those papers was still too near. As in our younger years we do not in general easily cast off a certain self- complacent conceit, this especially shows itself in despising what we have been but a little time before; ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... we are learning here. Nevertheless we might harass our enemies, giving them little rest day or night. Here, however, the ammunition difficulty comes in again. We have enough to last through a siege, but none to waste on doubtful enterprises. This reduces us to the contemplation of night attacks, and to trust in no weapon but the bayonet for capturing guns in positions which we have ...
— Four Months Besieged - The Story of Ladysmith • H. H. S. Pearse
... have heard it suggested, that, in this space, may, and probably does exist, a great inland desert, the crossing of which heats and dries the wind. Whether such a desert does or does not exist, is a problem that may not be solved for many years to come; unless, indeed, the expedition now in contemplation, for the survey of the country in search of a practicable overland route from Sydney to Port Essington, should lead to its earlier solution. To this expedition, should it ever start, I wish every ...
— Trade and Travel in the Far East - or Recollections of twenty-one years passed in Java, - Singapore, Australia and China. • G. F. Davidson
... wonderful boat in it—one that she had made for herself, out of a chip and a nail, using a stone for a hammer. She wore one of the antique bonnets brought down from the attic, and seemed lost in contemplation of her handiwork. Without her noticing, I made a photograph. How it carries me ...
— Dwellers in Arcady - The Story of an Abandoned Farm • Albert Bigelow Paine
... with his arms folded and his feet stretched out far before him, his head bent, but his eyes raised and fixed on the picture. They saw him first, and had two or three seconds to take in the profound contemplation of his mood. Then he slowly raised ...
— The Happiest Time of Their Lives • Alice Duer Miller
... lamented "Fate and Time and Change" than Mr. Yeats. It is, he says, "our narrow rooms, our short lives, our soon ended passions and emotions put us out of conceit with sooty and feeble reality." So the poet seeks refuge in his own dream and in contemplation of the life from which he came and to which he will return, and—one almost dare say—in communication with which he now knows such joy. The poet's life is little because he has found out the littleness of earthly things; the peasant holds ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... thereupon told him Word for Word how he was mistaken for Lorenzo, and his Management of himself. Aurelian commended his Prudence, in not discovering himself; and told him, If he could spare so much time from the Contemplation of his Mistress, he would inform him of an Adventure, though not so Accidental, yet of as great Concern to his own future Happiness. So related all that had happened to him with ...
— Incognita - or, Love & Duty Reconcil'd. A Novel • William Congreve
... pastime was tarring and feathering 'obnoxious Tories.' This consisted in stripping the victim naked, smearing him with a coat of tar and feathers, and parading him about the streets in a cart for the contemplation of his neighbours. Another amusement was making Tories ride the rail. This consisted in putting the 'unhappy victims upon sharp rails with one leg on each side; each rail was carried upon the shoulders of two ...
— The United Empire Loyalists - A Chronicle of the Great Migration - Volume 13 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • W. Stewart Wallace
... to say "yah Mynheer," or "yah ya Vrouw," to any question that was asked them; behaving, in all things, like decent, well-educated damsels. As to the gentlemen, each of them tranquilly smoked his pipe, and seemed lost in contemplation of the blue and white tiles with which the fireplaces were decorated; wherein sundry passages of Scripture were piously portrayed—Tobit and his dog figured to great advantage, Haman swung conspicuously on his gibbet, and Jonah appeared most manfully bouncing out of the ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... Think of you? To think of a whirlwind, though 'twere in a whirlwind, were a case of more steady contemplation, a very tranquillity of mind and mansion. A fellow that lives in a windmill has not a more whimsical dwelling than the heart of a man that is lodged in a woman. There is no point of the compass to which they cannot turn, and by which they are ...
— The Way of the World • William Congreve
... turn from the contemplation of the complete fleets, and differentiate between steam and sail, we find that the United Kingdom no longer holds the premier position, being surpassed, as regards steam, both by the colonies and by the United States. Steam vessels are safer than sailing ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1082, September 26, 1896 • Various
... Empire in the time of Augustus presents to the eye of contemplation a most interesting spectacle, whether we survey its territorial magnitude, its political power, or its intellectual activity. But when we look more minutely at its condition, we may discover many other strongly ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
Copyright © 2025 e-Free Translation.com
|
|
|
