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More "Sceptic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Vict. Thou little sceptic! Dost thou still doubt? What I most prize in woman Is her affections, not her intellect! The intellect is finite; but the affections Are infinite, and cannot be exhausted. Compare me with the great men of the earth; ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... of ghosts and spirits—they wouldn't do harm to you or any of us," remarked another fellow who was looked upon as the chief sceptic of the crew, though it is difficult to say what they did or did not believe, for considering their lives it might be supposed that ...
— Dick Cheveley - His Adventures and Misadventures • W. H. G. Kingston
... The sceptic might begin by questioning the fact itself; but I think it now so well established that argument on this score is unnecessary. Further, the deeper the trance, ceteris paribus, the better the phenomena. There is no denying that fact. While certain striking results are often obtained ...
— The Problems of Psychical Research - Experiments and Theories in the Realm of the Supernormal • Hereward Carrington
... Reason-rehabilitated butt Of many years of misdirected mockery? You ask omniscient HUXLEY, cocksure oracle On all from protoplasm to Home Rule, From Scripture to Sea Serpents; go consult Belligerent, brave, beloved BILLY RUSSELL! Verisimilitude incarnate, I Scorn your vain sceptic mirth! Besides, behold The portent riding me, as Thetis rode The lolloping, wolloping sea-horse of old! Is it less likely that I should remain Than she return?" Then, horror-thrilled, I gazed At her, the Abominable, the Ogreish Thing; The soul-revolting, sense-degrading She, Who swayed and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, January 21, 1893 • Various
... received a visit from a young countryman, whose parents, Germans, I believe, had sent him hither to be educated. He will, probably return with a good knowledge of Greek, perfect master of metaphysics and the pipe, extravagant in his political opinions, a sceptic in religion, and with some such ideas of the poetry of thought, as a New England dancing-master has of the poetry of motion, or a teacher of psalmody, of the art of music. After all, this is better than sending a boy to England, whence he would come back with the notions of Sir William ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper
... Duchess. "There is nothing so hateful as a sceptic. He is an impertinent person who laughs at our simplicity. I detest strong-minded people; I believe what I ought to believe; but in this particular case, I ...
— The Story Of The Duchess Of Cicogne And Of Monsieur De Boulingrin - 1920 • Anatole France
... if I did not suppose that First Cause works by universal Law, and it is just because It does so that I believe It will work for me and my concerns. The Law makes no exceptions, but it can be specialized through the power of the Word. Then our sceptic says, "What, do you think your word can do that?" To which I reply, "It is not my word because I am not using it in my lower personality, as John Smith or Mary Jones, but in that higher personality which recognizes ...
— The Law and the Word • Thomas Troward
... miracles, and to keep alive that mythopoeic faculty which is so essential for the imagination. But in the English Church a man succeeds, not through his capacity for belief, but through his capacity for disbelief. Ours is the only Church where the sceptic stands at the altar, and where St. Thomas is regarded as the ideal apostle. Many a worthy clergyman, who passes his life in admirable works of kindly charity, lives and dies unnoticed and unknown; but it is sufficient for some shallow uneducated passman out of ...
— Intentions • Oscar Wilde
... finds himself in the world of phenomena a solipsist and in the world of purposes a sceptic: there is no objective physical world, everything is my idea, and there is no objective value, no truth, no morality, everything is my individual decision. But to deny truth and morality means to contradict ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various
... passion, at first playfully tender in its irony, but later, under the influence of his critical antagonism to Brunetiere, growing keener, stronger, and more bitter. In 'Thais' he has undertaken to show the bond of sympathy that unites the pessimistic sceptic to the Christian ascetic, since both despise the world. In 'Lys Rouge', his greatest novel, he traces the perilously narrow line that separates love from hate; in 'Opinions de M. l'Abbe Jerome Coignard' he has given us the most radical breviary ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... was short and swarthy, a Savoyard, the son of an Italian doctor at St. Jean de Maurienne. He was a sceptic; he believed in Jeanne, but not in the legends ...
— The Valley of Vision • Henry Van Dyke
... improve. From that time the family of a farmer Sinclair, (one of Sir Lionel's tenants) was alarmed by strange and supernatural noises: one apartment in especial, occupied by a female member of the household, was allowed, even by the clerk of the parish, a very bold man, and a bit of a sceptic, to be haunted; the windows of that chamber were wont to open and shut, thin airy voices confabulate therein, and dark shapes hover thereout, long after the fair occupant had, with the rest of the family, retired to repose. But the ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... conception of age, and could not imagine an eternity of accomplished facts. It is, perhaps, for this reason that doubt of immortality never really comes to youth. One of the few things which our friend still believes is that every sceptic who deals honestly with his only history must be aware of an hour, almost a moment, of waning youth, when the vague potentiality of disbelief became a living doubt, thence-forward to abide with him till death resolve it. Endless not-being is unthinkable before ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... happiness Is he a dwarf or a giant Men doubted everything: the young men denied everything Of all the sisters of love, the most beautiful is pity Perfection does not exist Resorted to exaggeration in order to appear original Sceptic regrets the faith he has lost the power to regain Seven who are always the same: the first is called hope St. Augustine Ticking of which (our arteries) can be heard only at night When passion sways man, ...
— Widger's Quotations from The Immortals of the French Academy • David Widger
... question of a theoretical sceptic, but simply of a man who prided himself on being 'practical,' and left all talk about such abstractions to dreamers. The limitations of the Roman intellect and its characteristic over-estimate of deeds and contempt for pure thought, as well as the spirit of the governor, who ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... philosophic questions, she will naturally be disposed to ask, What beliefs are shared in by all minds, so far as normal and developed? In other words, she will be inclined to look at universality as the main thing to be determined in the region of philosophic inquiry. The metaphysical sceptic, fond of daring exploits, may break up as many accepted ideas as he likes into illusory debris, provided only he has some bit of reality left to take his stand on. Meanwhile, the scientific mind, here agreeing with the practical mind, will ask, "Will the beliefs thus said to be capable of ...
— Illusions - A Psychological Study • James Sully
... of implacable temper and imperious soul, an infidel of hard and cynical spirit, a sceptic and ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... a sceptic. His utter disbelief in Christian's testimony regarding the footprints was based upon positive scepticism. His reason refused to bend in accepting the possibility of the supernatural materialised. That a living beast could ever be other than palpably ...
— The Were-Wolf • Clemence Housman
... as to the fact that puerperal fever is sometimes communicated from one person to another, both directly and indirectly. In the present state of our knowledge upon this point I should consider such doubts merely as a proof that the sceptic had either not examined the evidence, or, having examined it, refused to accept its plain and unavoidable consequences. I should be sorry to think, with Dr. Rigby, that it was a case of "oblique ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... of horror at the exact moment foretold to him by a ghostly visitor. Various and somewhat conflicting accounts are given of this singular tragedy; but in them all the chief incidents stand out so clear and unassailable that even such a hard-headed sceptic as Dr Johnson declared, "I am so glad to have evidence of the spiritual world that I ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... which everybody else shrank. And amongst our neighbours in the village, those with whom, day after day, time after time, she would plead "the Lord's controversy," were those with whom every one else had failed. Some old village would-be sceptic, half shame-faced, half conceited, who had not prayed for half a lifetime, or been inside a church except at funerals; careworn mothers fossilized in the long neglect, of religious duties; sinners whom ...
— Miscellanea • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... the United States," he added as Dale's eyes filled with questions. "I came out of college a sceptic, John, and I'd be an infidel outright but for that wife of yours—she's nearer the sky, somehow, than any other mortal I've seen. I don't believe in anything, of course—but that dream—if I were you I'd trust ...
— The Angel of Lonesome Hill • Frederick Landis
... from the lecture-rooms of Philosophy and Letters (or of Arts, as it used to be called), are actuated by scepticism or indifference; but there are other persons, much to be consulted, who arrive at the same practical conclusion as the sceptic and unbeliever, from real reverence and pure zeal for the interests of Theology, which they consider sure to suffer from the superficial treatment of lay-professors, and the superficial reception ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... and calmness, must have seen many thoroughly corrupt ones, to have been so deeply impressed with a woman's capacity for evil. In "Virgin Soil," when he introduces Mashurina to the reader, he says: "She was a single woman . . . and a very chaste single woman. Nothing wonderful in that, some sceptic will say, remembering what has been said of her exterior. Something wonderful and rare, let us be permitted to say." It is significant that in not one of Turgenev's seven novels is the villain of the story a man. Women simply must play the leading role in his books, for to them ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... a mere animal, the Indian is of a subtlety more ancient than the Sphinx. In his primal brain—nearer nature than our own—the directness of a child mingles with the profoundest cunning. He believes easily in powers of light and darkness, yet is a sceptic all the while. Stirling knew this; but he could not know just when, if ever, the young charlatan Cheschapah would succeed in cheating the older chiefs; just when, if ever, he would strike the chord of their superstition. Till then they would ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister
... later Felix d'Aubremel was living in furnished lodgings in an alley off the Rue St. Pierre, and living by borrowing. The gentlemanly sceptic owed his landlady a good deal of money; his clothes were aged past wearing, and his tailor had long ago broken off all relations with him. The Marquis d'Aubremel was within a hairsbreadth of that utterly crushed state that ends in madness, or in suicide—which ...
— The Aldine, Vol. 5, No. 1., January, 1872 - A Typographic Art Journal • Various
... old Religion but a spectre now, Haunting the solitude of darkened minds, Mocked out of memory by the sceptic day? Is there no corner ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... contradiction. Lord Clarendon relates that he was condemned to be hanged, which was performed the same day; on the contrary, Burnet, Woodrow, Heath, Echard, concur in stating that he was condemned upon the Saturday, and executed upon a Monday. {3} Was any reader of English history ever sceptic enough to raise from hence a question, whether the Marquis of Argyll was executed or not? Yet this ought to be left in uncertainty, according to the principles upon which the Christian religion has sometimes ...
— The Fair Haven • Samuel Butler
... for a theological disputant, and fell back at once on the inexpugnable stronghold of faith when other evidence was lacking. "There's a fool! I know it is true, because I know it," is the exemplar and epitome of the sceptic-crushing process in other places than ...
— The Evolution of Theology: An Anthropological Study - Essay #8 from "Science and Hebrew Tradition" • Thomas Henry Huxley
... spellings were altered. "To-day" and "To-morrow" are spelled "today" and "tomorrow." Some words containing the letters "ise" in the original text, such as "idealise," had these letters changed to "ize," such as "idealize." "Sceptic" was ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... Stewart. Briefly it comes to this. No one can doubt that we believe, as a fact, in an external world. We believe that there are sun and moon, stones, sticks, and human bodies. This belief is accepted by the sceptic as well as by the dogmatist, although the sceptic reduces it to a mere blind custom or 'association of ideas.' Now Reid argues that the belief, whatever its nature, is not and cannot be derived from the sensations. We do not construct ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... of Babel was destroyed by the hand of Him whose name I dare not pronounce,' said the sceptic. ...
— The History of a Lie - 'The Protocols of the Wise Men of Zion' • Herman Bernstein
... divines and graver philosophers; though it is certain, that no man ever met with any such absurd creature, or conversed with a man, who had no opinion or principle concerning any subject, either of action or speculation. This begets a very natural question; What is meant by a sceptic? And how far it is possible to push these philosophical ...
— An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding • David Hume et al
... statement must appear paradoxical, and a first reading of the two writers reveals their differences rather than their resemblances. The one strikes us as essentially the sane; the other, even in his first books, reveals that lack of mental balance which was to terminate in insanity. The one is a genial sceptic; the other is a fanatic dogmatist. To Montaigne life is a comedy; to his disciple life is a tragedy. The one philosophizes with a smile; the other, to use his own expression, philosophizes with a hammer. The one is a Conservative; ...
— German Problems and Personalities • Charles Sarolea
... Thus the sceptic still continues to reason and believe, even though be asserts, that he cannot defend his reason by reason; and by the same rule he must assent to the principle concerning the existence of body, though he cannot pretend by any arguments of philosophy to maintain its veracity. Nature has ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... shrewd philosopher, And had read every text and gloss over, Whatever sceptic could inquire for, For every why he had a wherefore. He could reduce all things to acts, And knew ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... torpor of the will, renewing itself in detail towards each successive thesis that offers, and you can no more kill it off by logic than yon can kill off obstinacy or practical joking. This is why it is so irritating. Your consistent sceptic never puts his scepticism into a formal proposition,—he simply chooses it as a habit. He provokingly hangs back when he might so easily join us in saying yes, but he is not illogical or stupid,—on the contrary, ...
— The Meaning of Truth • William James
... especially De Divinatione, ii. 14, 34; 60, 124; 69, 142. 'Qua ex coniunctione naturae et quasi concentu atque consensu, quam sympatheian Graeci appellant, convenire potest aut fissum iecoris cum lucello meo aut meus quaesticulus cum caelo, terra rerumque natura?' asks the sceptic in the second of ...
— Five Stages of Greek Religion • Gilbert Murray
... contemporary of Alexander the Great, whose expedition into Asia he joined. He appears, as far as his philosophy went, to have been an universal sceptic. He impeached, however, none of the chief principles of morality, but, regarding Socrates as his model, directed all his endeavours towards the production in his pupils of ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... having the two persons present, who, as having seen the Ghost before, are naturally eager in confirming their former opinions,—whilst the sceptic is silent, and after having been twice addressed by his friends, answers with two hasty syllables—'Most like,'—and a confession ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... been more hardly dealt with. The pentecostal charism, I believe, exhausted itself amongst the earliest disciples. Yet any one who has had to attend, as I have done, to copious objurgations, strewn with such appellations as "infidel" and "coward," must be a hardened sceptic indeed if he doubts the existence of a "gift of tongues" in the Churches of our time; unless, indeed, it should occur to him that some of these outpourings may have taken place after "the third hour of the day." I am far from thinking that it is worth while to give much attention to these ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... through. Thus his life exactly spans the interval between the old world and the new. His family, which belonged to the magistracy of Grenoble, preserved the living tradition of the eighteenth century. His grandfather was a polite, amiable, periwigged sceptic after the manner of Fontenelle, who always spoke of 'M. de Voltaire' with a smile 'melange de respect et d'affection'; and when the Terror came, two representatives of the people were sent down to Grenoble, with the result that Beyle's father ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... in a just and beneficent ordering of the destinies of men; and the more he and the poet were oppressed, the more bitter was the irony, often amounting to extravagance, with which the mocking sceptic attacked him. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... sure your father wouldn't object?' I asked of my companion—a most bright and amusing Eton boy—to whom I was playing bear leader. 'Not a bit,' replied he; 'my father is a naturalist and Darwinian; not a sceptic, but Agnosticus suavis or Verecundus, ordo compositae, you know. "Hunt the ghost by all means," said he, when I suggested a ghost "worry," and then as he does sometimes over coffee and a cigarette after dinner he talked with a real keen interest on the whole subject. He ...
— Border Ghost Stories • Howard Pease
... Overbeck, and a perfectly elegant bow? Wonderful man! Yes, for that was no petulant child, with childish requests, evasions, outbursts; but a premature man, almost an old man. A reasoner; a pessimist; a sceptic. A genial head! What elegance! What command of self. A princely exterior. Marvellous man! What could he do with him? If he had asked for forgiveness; had promised, in part, even to accommodate himself to his father's wishes; even to change ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)
... lodgings. A poor industrious devil like me, who have toiled, and drudged, and plotted to gain my ends, and am at last disappointed by other people's folly, may in pity be allowed to swear and grumble a little; but a captious sceptic in love, a slave to fretfulness and whim, who has no difficulties but of his own creating, is a subject more fit for ...
— The Rivals - A Comedy • Richard Brinsley Sheridan
... To the Sceptic—(an apostate, and an undoubted male)—another view was preferable. He held that George Eliot had carried what he called the 'Death's-Head Style' of art a trifle too far. He read her books in much the same spirit and to much the same purpose that he went to the ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... blood,' moralised Gotthold. 'You are drawing, with fine strokes, the character of the born sceptic.' ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... London Missionary Society commenced work in Cape Colony; at first by four brethren, who were shortly reinforced by Dr. J.P. Vanderkemp, a native of Holland, a man of rare gifts and dauntless courage. Successively scholar, cavalry officer, and physician, he was for some years a sceptic, but being converted through the drowning of his wife and child, and his own narrow escape from death, he commenced the earnest study of the Bible and the Eastern languages, and gained such wonderful proficiency in the latter, ...
— Robert Moffat - The Missionary Hero of Kuruman • David J. Deane
... neglecting to show them any good for themselves?—Till these questions are answered absolutory to the artist, it were unwise to propose the other question—Why a poet, painter or sculptor is not honored and loved as formerly? "As formerly," says some avowed sceptic in old world transcendency and golden age affairs, "I believe formerly the artist was as much respected and cared for as he is now. 'Tis true the Greeks granted an immunity from taxation to some of ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... my books. I am hard at work on a book I have had in mind for several years,—the history and significance of humanitarianism. I need not tell you what the gist of that magnum opus is to be, and, dear sceptic, trust me it will be put into such a form as to stir up a pother whether with or without ultimate results. I have learned enough from the despised trade of journalism to manage that. When I return ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... had occasion once to interview a great doctor about the terrible case of a woman of high social position who had become the slave of drink. The doctor was a man of great force and ability, and of unwearying devotion; but he was what would be called a sceptic and a materialist. The priest asked if the case was hopeless; the great doctor shrugged his shoulders. "Yes," he said, "pathologically speaking, it is hopeless; there may be periods of recovery, but the course that the case will normally run will be a series ...
— From a College Window • Arthur Christopher Benson
... period, thought, and perhaps even spoken of myself as an infidel. But an infidel I assuredly was not: my belief was at least as real as my incredulity, and had, I am inclined to think, a much deeper seat in my mind. But wavering between the two extremes—now a believer, and anon a sceptic—the belief usually exhibiting itself as a strongly-based instinct,—the scepticism as the result of some intellectual process—I lived on for years in a sort of uneasy see-saw condition, without any middle ground between the two extremes, on ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... weeping child is made the callous, heartless man; of the all-believing child, the sneering sceptic; of the beautiful and modest, the shameless and abandoned; and this is what the world does ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... be satisfied; he supposed that all this was said simply to console him; and cursed himself and his fate most horribly. However, in a few minutes he became calmer and listened to the Mudalyar's explanation, which was in substance as follows The only way for the sceptic to account for this phenomenon, is to suppose that the astrologer opened the covers dexterously and read their contents. "So," he said, "I wrote four lines of old poetry on the paper with nitrate of silver, which would be invisible until exposed to the light; and this would have ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... been an easy, and a popular expedient, of late years, to deny the personal or real existence of men and things whose life and condition were too much for our belief. This system—which has often comforted the religious sceptic, and substituted the consolations of Strauss for those of the New Testament—has been of incalculable value to the historical theorists of the last and present centuries. To question the existence of Alexander the Great, would be a more excusable act, than ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... publications as might reach you. But I am now constrained to write something about it. My dear brother, you will hear it with a sad heart;—your nephew and mine, our only sister's only child, has, in relation to religion at least, become an absolute sceptic! ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... was the death Of Him whose life was Love! Holy with power He on the thought-benighted Sceptic beamed 30 Manifest Godhead, melting into day What floating mists of dark idolatry Broke and misshaped the omnipresent Sire:[110:1] And first by Fear uncharmed the drowsd Soul. Till of its nobler nature it 'gan feel 35 Dim recollections; and ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... laurel wreath that Murder rears, Blood-nursed, and watered by the widow's tears, Seems not so foul, so tainted, and so dread, As waves the nightshade round the sceptic head. ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... know himself, but to give pleasure to his friends. If he was bored by Montaigne, it was because he had little introspective curiosity. Like Montaigne himself, however, he was much the servant of whim in his literary tastes. That he was no sceptic but a disciple as regards Shakespeare and Milton and Pope and Gray suggests, on the other hand, how foolish it is to regard him as ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... almost every characteristic the Irishman differed from his employee. While Jim's word was never questioned even by the veriest sceptic of the plains, McLagan was notoriously the greatest, most optimistic liar in the state of Montana. A reputation that required some niceness of proficiency ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... 'tis impossible. All Things are so to the Incredulous. Look you, Sir, (continu'd she, seeing Lewis's Servant come in) do you remember his French Servant Albert, whom he took some Months before he left England?—There he is. Humh! (said the old Sceptic) I think verily 'tis the same. Ay, Sir, (said the Servant) I am the same, at your Service. How does your Master? (ask'd Sir Henry) Almost as bad as when the 'Squire your Son left him, (reply'd Albert) only I have stopp'd the Bleeding, and he is now dozing a little; to say ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... hour o' th' day 125 The clock does strike by algebra. Beside, he was a shrewd PHILOSOPHER, And had read ev'ry text and gloss over; Whate'er the crabbed'st author hath, He understood b' implicit faith: 130 Whatever sceptic could inquire for, For ev'ry why he had a wherefore; Knew more than forty of them do, As far as words and terms cou'd go. All which he understood by rote, 135 And, as occasion serv'd, would quote; No matter whether right or wrong, They might ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... A nineteenth-century sceptic's exposition of his Christian faith is the paradoxical subject of Bishop Blougram's Apology, and it is one which admirably suited that side of Browning's genius which leaned towards intellectual casuistry. But the poem is not only skilful casuistry—and casuistry, ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... to be racked, burnt, or strangled, rather than live up the truth of their account;—still if Mr. Hume's rule be my guide, I am not to believe them. Now I undertake to say that there exists not a sceptic in the world who would not believe them, or who ...
— Evidences of Christianity • William Paley
... you, my friends, why should not you? I honor the sceptic, the faithful and devout sceptic, with all my soul. I am no scorner of the man who, without scorn, finds it impossible to accept that which to my soul seems to be the absolute truth. I will scorn only that which God scorns. He scorns the ...
— Addresses • Phillips Brooks
... the invariable history of its appearance. No one has ever been able to come close to its shores, much less land upon them, but it has been so often seen on the west coast, that a doubt of its existence, if expressed in the company of coast fishermen, will at once establish for the sceptic a reputation for ignorance of the ...
— Irish Wonders • D. R. McAnally, Jr.
... doubtful whether the gift was innate. For my own part, I think it came to him suddenly. Indeed, until he was thirty he was a sceptic, and did not believe in miraculous powers. And here, since it is the most convenient place, I must mention that he was a little man, and had eyes of a hot brown, very erect red hair, a moustache with ends that he twisted up, and freckles. ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... was mainly defensive on the part of Frederic. In the exhaustion of his resources he could see no means of continuing the struggle. "It is only Fortune," says the royal sceptic, "that can extricate me from the situation I am in. I escape out of it by looking at the universe on the great scale like an observer from some distant planet. All then seems to be so infinitely small that I could almost pity my enemies for giving themselves so much trouble about so very little. ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... now what to call you," cried the same Mihalevitch, at three o'clock in the morning. "You are not a sceptic, nor a pessimist, nor a Voltairean, you are a loafer, and you are a vicious loafer, a conscious loafer, not a simple loafer. Simple loafers lie on the stove and do nothing because they don't know how to do anything; ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... purpose,—each life complete in itself: why not his own, then? The windless gray, the stars, the stone under his feet, stood alone in the universe, each working out its own soul into deed. If there were any all-embracing harmony, one soul through all, he did not see it. Knowles—that old sceptic—believed in it, and called it Love. Even Goethe himself, what was it he said? "Der Allumfasser, der Allerhalter, fasst und erhalt er ...
— Margret Howth, A Story of To-day • Rebecca Harding Davis
... reading, whereas 'Rasselas' might be a textbook for young ladies studying English in a convent. 'Candide' is a marvel of clearness and vivacity; whereas to read 'Rasselas' is about as exhilarating as to wade knee-deep through a sandy desert. Voltaire and Johnson, however, the great sceptic and the last of the true old Tories, coincide pretty well in their view of the world, and in the remedy which they suggest. The world is, they agree, full of misery, and the optimism which would deny the reality of the misery is childish. Il faut cultiver notre jardin is the last word of 'Candide,' ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... What if diabolic shapes lurked there, ready to become stealthily emergent? She had scoffed at such archaic fancies in the convent, yet, in lonely hours, had suffered panic fear of them, as will the hardiest sceptic. A certain little scar, moreover, carefully hidden under the soft hair arranged low on her right temple, smarted and pricked. In short, her habitual self-confidence suffered partial eclipse. She was visited by the disintegrating suspicion, for once, that the eternal laughter might, possibly, ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... but change, so far as eye can see. Thee and thy family were once of Quaker faith, but thee is a High Churchman now. Yet they said a year ago thee was a sceptic or an infidel." ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... in his "Representative Men," makes Montaigne stand for The Sceptic. Sceptic Montaigne was. He questioned, he considered, he doubted. He stood poised in equilibrium, in indifference, between contrary opinions. He saw reasons on this side, but he saw reasons also on that, and he did not clear his mind. "Que ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... gentleman, a native of France, whom it was alleged, when in a state of mental incapacity, was induced by a priest named Holdstock to make a testament of his property in favour of the Church of Rome, and of certain charities favoured by that church. It was given in evidence that the man had been a sceptic nearly all his life, hated priests, and was especially prejudiced against the peculiar disposition of his property, which the priests alleged that he had actually made upon his death-bed. A Roman Catholic physician, one Gasquet, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... the first faint morn Of life, the thirst for bliss Deep in man's heart is born; And, sceptic as he is, He fails not to judge clear if this ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... dreams stalk'd that heaven-favour'd round, Heaven-guarded, too, no Envy entrance found; Nor numerous wants, that vex advancing age, Nor Flattery's silver tale, nor Sorrow's sage; Frugal Affliction kept each growing dart, To o'erwhelm in future days the bleeding heart. No sceptic art veil'd Pride in Truth's disguise, But prayer unsoil'd of doubt besieged the skies; Ambition, avarice, care, to man retired, Nor came desires more quick than joys desired. A summer morn there was, and passing fair, Still was the breeze, ...
— Inebriety and the Candidate • George Crabbe
... hand, which the doctor let him take, and held it for a moment seeming to collect himself; then with his other hand he took that of the woman sitting in the arm-chair and placed the hand of the doctor in it, making a sign to the old sceptic to seat himself beside this oracle without a tripod. Minoret observed a slight tremor on the absolutely calm features of the woman when their hands were thus united by the Swedenborgian, but the action, though marvelous in its effects, was ...
— Ursula • Honore de Balzac
... this spot was really the centre of the earth, a sceptic once paid well for the privilege of ascending to the dome of the church to see if the sun gave him a shadow at noon. He came down perfectly convinced. The day was very cloudy and the sun threw no shadows at all; but the man was satisfied that if the sun had ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... traveller whose undaunted soul Sails o'er the seas from pole to pole Sees many wonders, which become So wonderful they strike one dumb, When we in their description view Monsters which Adam never knew. Yet, on the other hand, the sceptic Supplies his moral antiseptic; Denying unto truths belief, With groans which give his ears relief: But truth is stranger far than fiction, And outlives sceptic contradiction. Read Pliny or old Aldrovandus, If—they would say—you understand ...
— Fables of John Gay - (Somewhat Altered) • John Gay
... upon him, was more than ever depressed. One has the feeling that he was persuaded that only through devotion and self-negation could peace of mind be gained, and yet for himself could find none. The sceptic was too strong in him. Savonarola's eloquence could not make him serene, however much he may have come beneath its spell. It but served to increase his melancholy. Hence these wistful despondent Madonnas, all so conscious ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas
... defined as using mental activity so as to reach mental helplessness." For he notes how some of the rationalists, in doubting everything, have cast doubt even on the validity of thought. The complete sceptic says, "I have no right to think for myself. I have no right to think at all." The intellect has destroyed, but has not constructed; there is no proposition which is not doubted, no ideal which is not an object of attack; there is no rebel who has a sure faith in his own ...
— Personality in Literature • Rolfe Arnold Scott-James
... dangerous campaign lay before him, and the omens—but pshaw! he was not one of the rabble, to tremble at a flight of birds from the west or an ox with a bad liver. He had always admired the spirit of that old sceptic, Claudius, who had drowned the chickens off Drepana, though he admitted the faulty judgment in failing to realize the effect of such a defiance upon ignorant seamen and marines: the hierarchy was necessary for the State; if only to keep fools in order, but for a man of family and ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne
... Scepticism of Pilate" is the title of one of Robertson's greatest sermons. The preacher traces it to four sources: indecision; falseness to his own convictions; the taint of the worldly temper of his day; and that priestly bigotry which forbids inquiry, and makes doubt a crime. Pilate is the typical sceptic, who is worlds removed from the "honest" doubter. Serious doubt, which is pained and anxious in the search of truth, is in essence belief, for it believes in the value of truth, if only truth can be discovered; but typical scepticism not only ...
— Men of the Bible; Some Lesser-Known Characters • George Milligan, J. G. Greenhough, Alfred Rowland, Walter F.
... mere pretext by which the energy of one man sought to justify his ambition over the herd. Deeming himself one of the most honourable spirits of his age, he believed in no honour which he was unable to feel; and, sceptic in virtue, was therefore ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... the crushed sceptic through his iands. "Ay, news enough, Captain Johns. Who will be able to deny the awfulness, the genuineness? Another man would have dropped dead. You want to know what I had seen. All I can tell you is that since I've seen it my hair is ...
— Tales Of Hearsay • Joseph Conrad
... visited by a friend and fellow-sceptic, saying he had died that night and had realised the existence of another world. While relating the vision the news arrived of ...
— Real Ghost Stories • William T. Stead
... life-long) as loosely, by applying it to three distinct ideas; (1) the habitual, in popular parlance; (2) the exempt from duration; and (3) the everlasting, which embraces all duration. "Omniscience-Maker" is the old Roman sceptic's Homo fecit Deos. ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... confessed that the whited sepulchre of his religious observances had concealed a mass of putrefaction. The sceptic confessed that his refusal of religion was largely due to his hatred of the demands of God's holy law. The multitudes confessed that they had been selfish and sensual, shutting up their compassions, and refusing clothing and food ...
— John the Baptist • F. B. Meyer
... meet in comradeship, and pass together along the open roads of the world. No one is excluded because of his poverty or his sins; there is room in the ideal America for everybody except the doubter and sceptic. Whitman does not linger over the smaller groups of human society, like the family. He is not a fireside poet. He passes directly from his strong persons, meeting freely on the open road, to his conception of "these States." ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... of printing on my title-page a motto from Mr. Bernard Shaw; but it will perhaps come better here. "The fact," says Mr. Shaw, "that a believer is happier than a sceptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one. The happiness of credulity is a cheap and dangerous quality of happiness, and by no means a necessity of life. Whether Socrates got as much happiness out of life as Wesley is an unanswerable ...
— God and Mr. Wells - A Critical Examination of 'God the Invisible King' • William Archer
... when I was a happy undergraduate." (Audrey could not imagine Langley Wyndham ever being an undergraduate; it seemed to her that he must always have been a Master of Arts.) "I knew the real Flaxman Reed, and he was as logical a sceptic as you or I. There was an epidemic of ideas in our time, and the poor fellow was frightened, so he took it—badly. Of course he made up his mind that he was going to die, and he was horribly afraid of dying. So instead of talking about his interesting symptoms, as you or I might do" ("You ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... Sir, I am a sceptic as well as Helvetius, but of a more moderate complexion. There is no harm in telling mankind that there is not so much divinity in the Aeneid as they imagine; but, (Even if I thought so,) I would not preach that virtue and friendship are ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... the stranger replied, quite at his ease. "This is one of the best points of view," and it was much to his credit that he did not give the obvious turn to his remark by looking at the two girls as he made it, for neither the beauty of the youthful sceptic nor the quiet distinction of her sister was likely to have been lost upon a man of his stamp. That they were sisters, unlike as they were, could not have escaped ...
— A Venetian June • Anna Fuller
... find it patent, Gush after gush, reserved for you; Scarlet experiment! sceptic Thomas, Now, do you doubt that your ...
— Poems: Three Series, Complete • Emily Dickinson
... If there yet remains some sceptic, who doubts of our primary truth, and of all deductions we make, taking such truth as our standard, he must either be arguing in bad faith, or we must confess that there are men in complete mental blindness either innate ...
— On the Improvement of the Understanding • Baruch Spinoza [Benedict de Spinoza]
... of argument, concede that the manifestations upon which the Spiritists found their claims are genuine: that they are or can be produced without fraud; and let us then enquire in what respect our means for the conversion of the sceptic are improved. In the first place we find that all the manifestations—be their cause what it may—can occur only on the physical plane. However much the origin of the phenomena may perplex us, the phenomena themselves ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... thought it, with the light question, which summed up a Roman man of the world's indifference to ideas, and belief in solid facts like legions and swords. 'What is truth?' may be the cry of a seeking soul, or the sneer of a confirmed sceptic, or the shrug of indifference ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... often a sceptic on the surface and a believer underneath. Pascal has called Montaigne 'un pur pyrrhonien'; but Pascal himself has been accused of scepticism. Living in an age when the crimes daily committed in the name of religion might so easily have inspired a hater of violence like Montaigne with a ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... form a judgment on the subject; but, my dear Carlton, I protest to you, and you may think with what distress I say it, that if the Church of Rome is as ambiguous as our own Church, I shall be in the way to become a sceptic, on the very ground that I shall have no competent authority to tell me what to believe. The Ethiopian said, 'How can I know, unless some man do teach me?' and St. Paul says, 'Faith cometh by hearing.' If ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... plan, forethought, skill, and ingenuity, a blind unreasoning impulse. This contrast or rather opposition between the seeming and the real, this new view of birth and death, this sudden flash of light athwart the impenetrable darkness, is what provokes the wonder of this scoffing sceptic.[185] ...
— The Sceptics of the Old Testament: Job - Koheleth - Agur • Emile Joseph Dillon
... I never ask anybody to believe me; the more so as I was once an absolute sceptic myself. As I see it now, I was prejudiced. The mere fact that spiritual seances and the services of a medium involved the payment of money condemned the whole thing in my eyes. I did not realize, as I do now, that these medii, like anybody else, have got to ...
— Frenzied Fiction • Stephen Leacock
... Voltaire, never very popular in England, becomes "as mischievous a monkey as any of them"; the enthusiasm for Rousseau, which had reached extravagant proportions, completely disappears, and he is merely the slanderous sceptic, who, after soaking other people's waistcoats with his tears, sent his own babies to the Foundling Hospital. The influence of the French eighteenth-century literature on the mind of England was first combated and then baldly denied. The premier journalist of the age declared, with the satisfaction ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... criticism in judging their value and their truth. Two very convincing forms of mediumship, the direct voice and spirit photography, have also become prominent. Each of these presents such proof that it is impossible for the sceptic to face them, and he can only avoid them ...
— The Vital Message • Arthur Conan Doyle
... As has often been pointed out, the ceremony was in all its details—even to the sponsors, the wrapping a garment about the baptised, the baptismal fee, the feast—precisely the same as when a child was baptised. Magius, who is no sceptic, relates from his own experience an instant of this sort, where a certain bishop stood sponsor for two bells, giving them both his own name—William. (See his De Tintinnabulis, ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... to a pine-tree. The funeral of the old woman was promptly converted into a free fight, in which there was more noise than bloodshed. After this event the medicine-men left Why-Why to his own courses, and waited for a chance of turning public opinion against the sceptic. ...
— In the Wrong Paradise • Andrew Lang
... sacrilege. At any rate, when his remains were safely on board the Venetian ship, and a man in another ship scoffed at the idea that they were authentic, the Venetian ship instantly and mysteriously made for the one containing this sceptic, stove its side in, and continued to ram it until he took back his doubts. And later, when, undismayed by this event, one of the sailors on S. Mark's own ship also denied that the body was genuine, he was possessed of a devil until he ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... book and self I had the pleasure of first introducing to Lord Lansdowne, under whose Administration this appointment was made. The pupils at Haileybury must now learn from Jones's lectures the objections he made to Malthus's system! I remember once hearing the answer of a sceptic in Political Economy, when reproached with not being of some Political Economy Club. "Whenever I see any two of you gentlemen agree, I shall be ...
— The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... curious and dull exhibition, not much amused, and not tempted in the least to take a part. He beheld his father ponderously grinding sand, his mother fierily breaking butterflies, his brother labouring at the pleasures of the Hawbuck with the ardour of a soldier in a doubtful battle; and the vital sceptic looked on wondering. They were careful and troubled about many things; for him there seemed not even one thing needful. He was born disenchanted, the world's promises awoke no echo in his bosom, the world's activities and the world's distinctions seemed to him equally without ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... Keskarrah alone used boldly to express his disbelief of a Supreme Deity, and state that he could not credit the existence of a Being, whose power was said to extend every where, but whom he had not yet seen, although he was now an old man. The aged sceptic is not a little conceited, as the following exordium to one of his speeches evinces: "It is very strange that I never meet with any one who is equal in sense to myself." The same old man, in one of ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 2 • John Franklin
... that indefinable and gregarious influence which we call nowadays the spirit of the age, when he said that "every age has a kind of universal genius." He had also a just notion of that in which he lived; for he remarks, incidentally, that "all knowing ages are naturally sceptic and not at all bigoted, which, if I am not much deceived, is the proper character of our own." It may be conceived that he was even painfully half-aware of having fallen upon a time incapable, not merely of a great poet, but perhaps of any poet at all; for nothing is so sensitive to ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... rare in it. And permit me to tell you my whole mind. If I must needs suffer the inconsolable misfortune of renouncing the happiness I had hoped for, are you quite sure that the man to whom one of these days you will give your niece may not be something more than a sceptic, ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... him in that grim tavern. The man went away, thinking no doubt that this was not the first young gentleman who had announced that he was going away ere two hours were over. "Well, if your honour does stay, there is good beef and carrot at two o'clock," says the sceptic, and closes the door on Mr. Harry and his ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... exaggerations about the impotence of reason in fallen man, and Pascal had given his own highly personal twist to it. Bayle has been hailed as a forerunner of Voltairean scepticism. It would be truer to say that a Voltairean sceptic could read Bayle's discussions in his own sense and for his own purposes if he wished. But Bayle was not a sceptic. It is hard to say what he was; his whole position as between faith and reason is hopelessly confused. He was a scholar, a wit, and a philosophical sparring-partner ...
— Theodicy - Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil • G. W. Leibniz
... Mildred, when they rose from table, "a wonder has come to pass since you deserted us. Look, sceptic that you are!" and she led him to the window, and, lifting a glass shade which protected a flower-pot, showed him a green spike peeping ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... her; yet was not without a certain respect for her. Old sceptic that she was, ideals of any sort imposed upon her. How people came by them, she ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the lives of many people. Truth I find everywhere expressed, goodness in all things; but I neither look for nor expect perfection in any one thing the world has ever produced. "Tell me where God is," a somewhat, cynical sceptic asked of a child. "Tell me where He is not," replied the child; and the same thing applies to goodness. Do not tell me where goodness is, but point out to, me, if you can, where it is not. It is for each one to find out for himself where the right path lies, ...
— An Autobiography • Catherine Helen Spence
... Missionary Society commenced work in Cape Colony; at first by four brethren, who were shortly reinforced by Dr. J.P. Vanderkemp, a native of Holland, a man of rare gifts and dauntless courage. Successively scholar, cavalry officer, and physician, he was for some years a sceptic, but being converted through the drowning of his wife and child, and his own narrow escape from death, he commenced the earnest study of the Bible and the Eastern languages, and gained such wonderful proficiency in the ...
— Robert Moffat - The Missionary Hero of Kuruman • David J. Deane
... my friend and I went again to an evening seance at the same house, different people being present on this occasion. A stupid, "unintelligent sceptic" woman put us all out of harmony by making inane suggestions, always declaring that "she would not for the world interfere with the conditions," but doing so all the same. The "Angel Mother" came again, and rather lost her temper, I thought, with an aggravating, illogical man in the circle, ...
— Seen and Unseen • E. Katharine Bates
... philosophic theory because the conditions of the age demanded it. The one source of enlightenment when he wrote was Hume; but for some uncertain reason, perhaps his piety, Blackstone makes no reference to the great sceptic's speculations. So that he was driven back upon notions he felt to be false, without a proper realization of their falsity. His use of Montesquieu shows rather how dangerous a weapon a great idea can be in the ...
— Political Thought in England from Locke to Bentham • Harold J. Laski
... join the Theosophists and kiss Buddha's big toe, did you? I tried to get into their set once, but they cast me out for a sceptic without a chance of improving ...
— Under the Deodars • Rudyard Kipling
... your father wouldn't object?' I asked of my companion—a most bright and amusing Eton boy—to whom I was playing bear leader. 'Not a bit,' replied he; 'my father is a naturalist and Darwinian; not a sceptic, but Agnosticus suavis or Verecundus, ordo compositae, you know. "Hunt the ghost by all means," said he, when I suggested a ghost "worry," and then as he does sometimes over coffee and a cigarette after dinner he talked with a real keen interest on ...
— Border Ghost Stories • Howard Pease
... of the strife centres in this appeal. In itself, the appeal is perfectly competent and legitimate. But it may be met, on the part of the sceptic and idealist, by two modes of tactic. The one tactic is weak, and gives an easy triumph to Dr Reid: the other is more formidable, and, in ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... he kept his mind continually fixed on an Almighty judge and an eternal reward. And hence he acquired their contempt of external circumstances, their fortitude, their tranquillity, their inflexible resolution. But not the coolest sceptic or the most profane scoffer was more perfectly free from the contagion of their frantic delusions, their savage manners, their ludicrous jargon, their scorn of science, and their aversion to pleasure. Hating tyranny with a perfect hatred, he had nevertheless ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... a great shock to me. It seemed clear from his answers to the sceptic that the case for doctrinal orthodoxy and all that faded and by no means awful hereafter, which I had hitherto accepted as I accepted the sun, was an extremely poor one, and to hammer home that idea the first book I got from the Institute happened to be an American edition of the collected ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... spet upon his grave, for all the good we shall do en by what we lift up, now he's got so far,' said Notton, the clarionet man and professed sceptic of the choir. 'But I'm ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy
... Irtish is unrivalled. Being nearly four miles long, it is on that account phenomenal; but its stupendous piers, designed specially to resist the fearful pressure of the ice, would alone convince any sceptic of the determination of the Russian administration to spare none of the resources of the Empire in order to make this railway absolutely efficient, alike for mercantile and military purposes. The ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various
... health, bring on a train of other ailments, that may, in the end, prove mortal. The admission cares for nothing, as a matter of every-day experience; and the original proposition to which it is objected as a qualification, remains as a truth which may humble the pride of man, and speak to the sceptic through the crushed heart of a fatal experience. I have seen many instances of the fatal effects of grief as a direct mortal agent, killing, by its own unaided energies, as certainly, though not in so short a time, as a blow or ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume 17 • Alexander Leighton
... ceased to wonder. Mr Wentworth no longer opened his fine eyes in amazement when that household was named. Mrs Smith, their landlady, calmly brought her bills to Nettie, and forgot that it was not the most natural thing in the world that she should be paid by Miss Underwood. The only persistent sceptic was the doctor. Edward Rider could not, would not, believe it. He who had so chafed under Fred's society, felt it beyond the bounds of human possibility that Nettie could endure him. He watched with an eagerness which he found it difficult ...
— The Doctor's Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... militate with the obstinate preconceptions of the mob. Had this author, instead of inveighing against the guilt and absurdity of atheism, demonstrated its falsehood, his conduct would have been more suited to the modesty of the sceptic and the toleration ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... as Cicero makes his Stoic do in De Natura Deorum,[23] on the evidence of design and purpose in the universe, but by this process succeeded only in proving to their own satisfaction that the world is divine—a fatalistic pantheism which roused the ire of the Epicurean and Sceptic alike, and which even Cicero seemed hardly ...
— The Basis of Early Christian Theism • Lawrence Thomas Cole
... voice as if struck for the first time by the coincidence. "It is the photograph of that apparition which I have seen. Very sweet. Most interesting. A little cloudy naturally. . . . Mr. Renouard! I hope you are not a sceptic. It's so consoling to ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... Thus his life exactly spans the interval between the old world and the new. His family, which belonged to the magistracy of Grenoble, preserved the living tradition of the eighteenth century. His grandfather was a polite, amiable, periwigged sceptic after the manner of Fontenelle, who always spoke of 'M. de Voltaire' with a smile 'melange de respect et d'affection'; and when the Terror came, two representatives of the people were sent down to Grenoble, ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... "In religion," says his biographer, "Agassiz very liberal and tolerant, and respected the views and convictions of every one. In his youth and early manhood, Agassiz was undoubtedly a materialist, or, more exactly, a sceptic; but in time, and little by little, his studies led him to belief in a divine Creative Power. He was more in sympathy with Unitarianism than with any other ...
— Unitarianism in America • George Willis Cooke
... course they are rough, but one must not say that they are when a great man is responsible for them. Have a care, Master Shoemaker! I see that you are a sceptic. Have a care—you know ...
— Lucky Pehr • August Strindberg
... Godwin or Shelley or the deists of the eighteenth century of the nature-worshipping humanists of the Renaissance, without discovering that you differ from them twice as much as you differ from the Pope. You are a nineteenth-century sceptic, and you are always telling me that I ignore the cruelty of nature. If you had been an eighteenth-century sceptic you would have told me that I ignore the kindness and benevolence of nature. You are an atheist, and you praise the deists of the ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... beyond all measure. She felt none the less assured of that evil because she could not foresee one bad consequence likely to ensue from what she had done. Her misgivings pressed heavily upon her; for her father, a determined sceptic, had taught her his own views, and she was, therefore, destitute of the consolations which religion has for the wrongdoer. It was plainly her duty to send for the policeman and clear up the deception she had practised on him. But this she could not do. Her will, in spite of her reason, acted ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... of 1761 was mainly defensive on the part of Frederic. In the exhaustion of his resources he could see no means of continuing the struggle. "It is only Fortune," says the royal sceptic, "that can extricate me from the situation I am in. I escape out of it by looking at the universe on the great scale like an observer from some distant planet. All then seems to be so infinitely small ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... in the next life. We do not claim that suffering is abolished. Very far from that. We only claim that it is not of endless duration, and that it is of a reformatory character. If a man is thoroughly imbued with such ideas, he will be very far from being a sceptic. He will realize that the truth is a ...
— Love's Final Victory • Horatio
... powerful the quality, the less can it be rendered into terms. It is the one marvellous, remaining, musical fact not to be defined that makes the Parthenon, or some other masterpiece of art, translate us to a new plane of existence, and inspire, for the time being, the pessimist with hope and the sceptic with religion. ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... his room, and sat there and waited and watched. His thoughts were far from enviable. He was in the mood of a man who, from being an utter sceptic, or at least Agnostic, is suddenly shaken up into a recognition of something supernatural, and does not as yet know how to make the other fashions of his life fit in with this new revelation. Selfish as he was, he ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... for 1856, and which led to a serious lawsuit against the publishers. The printer had mixed the biographies of the Bishop of Oxford and Robert Owen the Socialist in such a way that Bishop Wilberforce was called "a sceptic as it regards religious revelation." The mistake occurred in locking up the forms. Doubtless both biographies had been approved by their subjects, but apparently no proof was read after the fatal telescoping of ...
— The Booklover and His Books • Harry Lyman Koopman
... suddenly passed out of her life, without a sign, or a token, or a word, leaving her to weep over the wasted treasure of sentiment she had so greedily hoarded up for him alone; not that this caused her to lose her faith in man or vow to live a life of solitary sceptic amendment for having indulged a foolish passion in her early days, but because she firmly believed the object of her fond regard to be at heart a worthy one, and because she felt that her happy lively sentiment, becoming spent and weary, ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera
... saint thinks of the previous 'conflict', and closes them in prayer. Both are waters of the same fountain—'this' the basin, 'that' the salient column, both equally dear to God, and both may be used as examples for men, the one to invite the thoughtless sceptic, the other to alarm the reckless believer. You will see, therefore, that I do not object to the sentence itself; but as a matter of 'feeling', it met me too singly and suddenly. I had not anticipated ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... I bet you do a jolly rank paper too,' I said, remembering that the sceptic is sometimes vouchsafed revelations to which the most devout believer may not aspire. It is, for instance, always the young man who scoffs at ghosts that the family spectre chooses as his audience. But it required more than a mere sneer or an empty gibe to pump information out of Bradshaw. He took ...
— Tales of St. Austin's • P. G. Wodehouse
... everybody else shrank. And amongst our neighbours in the village, those with whom, day after day, time after time, she would plead "the Lord's controversy," were those with whom every one else had failed. Some old village would-be sceptic, half shame-faced, half conceited, who had not prayed for half a lifetime, or been inside a church except at funerals; careworn mothers fossilized in the long neglect, of religious duties; sinners whom every one else thought ...
— Miscellanea • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... Him, the glory of His face will be reflected in ours, and we shall be changed more and more into His image.[87] I have frequently told the story of the jurist who lived in our middle-west country two generations ago, a confirmed but honest sceptic, and who was converted by the face of a fellow townsman. The sceptic became thoroughly convinced that the thing in his neighbour's face which so attracted him was his Christian faith, and it was this that led the sceptic to accept Christ. Last year, I met out in ...
— Quiet Talks on Following the Christ • S. D. Gordon
... put it in that cut-and-dried way, I must plead guilty: in fact, I should owe you some sort of apology, only'—with a stress on the word—'my speech was not intended for the house-top. I am rather a sceptic about female missions, Miss Garston, and do not always measure my words when I am discussing abstract theories with a friend. In my opinion Cunliffe is the one you ought to blame, though if the speech rankles ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... negation of plan, forethought, skill, and ingenuity, a blind unreasoning impulse. This contrast or rather opposition between the seeming and the real, this new view of birth and death, this sudden flash of light athwart the impenetrable darkness, is what provokes the wonder of this scoffing sceptic.[185] ...
— The Sceptics of the Old Testament: Job - Koheleth - Agur • Emile Joseph Dillon
... liberality. It must never be forgotten that even when he was a despot in practice he was generally a liberal in theory. Dickens and romancers make the pre-revolution tyrant a sincere believer in tyranny; generally he was not. He was a sceptic about everything, even about his own position. The romantic Foulon says of the people, "Let them eat grass," with bitter and deliberate contempt. The real Foulon (if he ever said it at all) probably said it as a sort of dreary joke because he couldn't think ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton
... anticipated that frankness, nor was the idea which it expressed uppermost in his mind when he said, "but, but—" There were many buts all very confused, struggling through his mind as he spoke. However, he answered as a Parisian sceptic, not ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... of such a vacuum. I was a sceptic from my youth up. No doubt those who were nurtured in superstition, when reason at last conquers and they break away, may experience a temporary blank; but the wonders of nature and the achievements of man and the demands of the suffering world—these ...
— The Grey Room • Eden Phillpotts
... purpose by natural and physical causes; by its deep caverns, beds of sulphur, and numero is volcanoes, of which those of Aetna, of Vesuvius, and of Lipari, exhibit a very imperfect representation. The calmest and most intrepid sceptic could not refuse to acknowledge that the destruction of the present system of the world by fire, was in itself extremely probable. The Christian, who founded his belief much less on the fallacious arguments of reason than on the authority of tradition ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... connected with action, the truth that decided dissent from them implies more or less of a reproach upon those who hold them decidedly, becomes so obvious that every one perceives it.' No doubt a protestant or a sceptic regards the beliefs of a catholic as a reproach upon the believer's understanding. So the man whose whole faith rests on the miraculous and on acts of special intervention, regards the strictly positive and scientific thinker as the dupe of a crude and narrow logic. ...
— On Compromise • John Morley
... conversation should end in Overbeck, and a perfectly elegant bow? Wonderful man! Yes, for that was no petulant child, with childish requests, evasions, outbursts; but a premature man, almost an old man. A reasoner; a pessimist; a sceptic. A genial head! What elegance! What command of self. A princely exterior. Marvellous man! What could he do with him? If he had asked for forgiveness; had promised, in part, even to accommodate himself to his father's wishes; even to change his life a ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)
... the sceptic, was not satisfied. "All I know is," said he, "that I saw a Jew cutting bread at the Albero Verde last Martinmas, and he slipped into his own thumb, and came off as red as a dog's ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... failed them, heart and feeling took the place of strength; and their truth and their tenderness went straight to the heart of their young world, as only the highest perfection of illusion could appeal to the eyes of the critical, half-sceptic ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... accounts of the facts of a seance will be given by a believer and a sceptic. A whole party of believers will affirm that they saw Mr. Home float out of one window, and in at another, while a single honest sceptic declares that Mr. Home was sitting in his chair all the time. And in this last case we have an example of a fact, of which there is ample illustration, ...
— Psychic Phenomena - A Brief Account of the Physical Manifestations Observed - in Psychical Research • Edward T. Bennett
... them, and was sure that he was too 'generous and free from all contriving' to 'peruse the foils.' To the very end, his soul, however sick and tortured it may be, answers instantaneously when good and evil are presented to it, loving the one and hating the other. He is called a sceptic who has no firm belief in anything, but he ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... fear that his own castle would suffer in wars of the League. As to the Reformation, he held it for a hasty, conceited movement on the part of persons who did not know what they were meddling with, and, being a perfect sceptic, he was a perfectly good Churchman. Full of tolerance, good-humour, and content, cheerful in every circumstance, simple and charming, yet melancholy in his hour, Montaigne is a thorough representative of the French spirit in literature. His ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... humility, and of reverence for antiquity—begins. The true university man, born and bred in the century, not in the years, in the race halls, not those alone in his Alma Mater, is neither a scoffer nor an atheist, nor a critic, sceptic, or cynic. He is a man of simple and exalted faith. God, who hath brought such great things to pass in science, nature, and art, in human character, in the destiny of nations, and the history of humble men and women, is a God before whom there must be awe and reverence, ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown
... among entirely new surroundings afford an invaluable opportunity for original work and deep reflection. Freed from the formalism of the schools, thrown upon the use of his own intellect, compelled to test each single object as the prevailing system and becomes, first a sceptic, and then an investigator. This change, which did not fail to affect Huxley, and through which arose that Huxley whom we commemorate to-day, is no unknown occurrence to one who is acquainted with the history, not only of knowledge, but ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... renewing itself in detail towards each successive thesis that offers, and you can no more kill it off by logic than yon can kill off obstinacy or practical joking. This is why it is so irritating. Your consistent sceptic never puts his scepticism into a formal proposition,—he simply chooses it as a habit. He provokingly hangs back when he might so easily join us in saying yes, but he is not illogical or stupid,—on the contrary, he ...
— The Meaning of Truth • William James
... the President of the United States," he added as Dale's eyes filled with questions. "I came out of college a sceptic, John, and I'd be an infidel outright but for that wife of yours—she's nearer the sky, somehow, than any other mortal I've seen. I don't believe in anything, of course—but that dream—if I were you I'd trust it—I'd follow ...
— The Angel of Lonesome Hill • Frederick Landis
... most cases they will take the oaths that come in their way and kiss the hands—just as the British elementary teachers bow unbelieving heads to receive the episcopal pat, and just as the British sceptic in orders will achieve triumphs of ambiguity to secure the episcopal see. And their reason for submission will not be absolutely despicable; they will know there is no employment worth speaking of without it. After all, one has only one life, and ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... adversity by retirement to the convent of Saint-Cyr. There was no loud mourning as the King's corpse was driven to the tomb on a car of black and silver, for the new century knew not the old reverence for kings. It was the age of Voltaire and the mocking sceptic. ...
— Heroes of Modern Europe • Alice Birkhead
... letter, I find I am no sceptic, having affirmed no less than four times, that I am sure. Though this is extremely awkward, I am sure I will not write my letter over again; so pray excuse ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... said Mildred, when they rose from table, "a wonder has come to pass since you deserted us. Look, sceptic that you are!" and she led him to the window, and, lifting a glass shade which protected a flower-pot, showed him a green spike peeping from ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... Heaven forbid, (cry'd the Father) sure 'tis impossible. All Things are so to the Incredulous. Look you, Sir, (continu'd she, seeing Lewis's Servant come in) do you remember his French Servant Albert, whom he took some Months before he left England?—There he is. Humh! (said the old Sceptic) I think verily 'tis the same. Ay, Sir, (said the Servant) I am the same, at your Service. How does your Master? (ask'd Sir Henry) Almost as bad as when the 'Squire your Son left him, (reply'd Albert) only I have stopp'd the Bleeding, and he is now dozing a little; ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... longing to be among the first ranks, which is always inspired by the first approach of the battle? Again, No. Did he really believe in this cause? Did he believe in his love? "Oh, cursed aesthetic! Sceptic!" his lips murmured inaudibly. Why this weariness, this disinclination to speak, unless it be shouting or raving? What is this inner voice that he wishes to drown by his shrieking? But Mariana, this delightful, faithful comrade, this pure, passionate soul, this wonderful girl, ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev
... to its shores, much less land upon them, but it has been so often seen on the west coast, that a doubt of its existence, if expressed in the company of coast fishermen, will at once establish for the sceptic a reputation for ignorance of the common affairs of ...
— Irish Wonders • D. R. McAnally, Jr.
... the tales that were not true, and these, to Gilian's sorrow, she plainly did not care for; he could see it in the calmness of her features. When she yawned at a tale of Irish mermaidens he was dashed exceedingly, for before him again was the sceptic who had laughed at his heron's nest and had wantonly broken the crystal of the Lady's Linn. But by-and-by she sang, and oh! all was forgiven her. This time she sang some songs of her father's, odd airs from English camp-fires, braggart of word, or with the melodious ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... it was brave. It was. I was only fifteen, and I had lived all my days in the thick of the mystery stuff, while my scepticism, very recently acquired, was only skin-deep. I could be a sceptic out in the open in the sunshine. But I was afraid of the dark. And in that twilight room, the bones of the dead all about me in the big jars, why, the old lady had me scared stiff. As we say to-day, she had my goat. Only I was brave and didn't let on. And I put my bluff across, for my mother ...
— On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales • Jack London
... journals of the Expedition, which he knew were likely to become public documents, my son seldom or never touched upon the all-important subject of religion. This has given rise to an opinion broadly hinted in Australia by some, and of course believed by more, that he was either a sceptic or a downright infidel. Nothing could be further from the truth. His mother's love had instructed him early and zealously in the doctrines of Christianity, and prepared his mind for a conviction of their divine truth when he reached an age which ...
— Successful Exploration Through the Interior of Australia • William John Wills
... railways, the defender of negroes, or else the advocate of slavery; in a word, the Nothingologue is an important man, quite as the convinced gendelettre, who reserves to himself the Council of State, and as the sceptic gendelettre, who becomes Master of Requests or Governor of ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... a young countryman, whose parents, Germans, I believe, had sent him hither to be educated. He will, probably return with a good knowledge of Greek, perfect master of metaphysics and the pipe, extravagant in his political opinions, a sceptic in religion, and with some such ideas of the poetry of thought, as a New England dancing-master has of the poetry of motion, or a teacher of psalmody, of the art of music. After all, this is better than sending a boy to England, whence he would come back with the notions of Sir William Blackstone ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper
... like it. I only missed what you said," returned the sceptic, whose name was Fred Jenkins, "for I've lived a while in France, and understand your lingo pretty well. Pass that goose, Morel, if you have left anything on it. This air o' the wilderness beats the air o' the sea itself for givin' a fellow ...
— The Buffalo Runners - A Tale of the Red River Plains • R.M. Ballantyne
... meek tones, had said, "Philip Beaufort was my husband," Roger Morton had disbelieved her. And now one word from the son, who could, in comparison, know so little of the matter, had almost sufficed to convert and to convince the sceptic. Why was this? Because—Man ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... woman who tells me how her soul may be projected from her body, and how, while she lies in a lethargy, she can control the actions of people at a distance. Do I accept it? Certainly not. She must prove and re-prove before I yield a point. But if I am still a sceptic, I have at least ceased to be a scoffer. We are to have a sitting this evening, and she is to try if she can produce any mesmeric effect upon me. If she can, it will make an excellent starting-point for our investigation. No one can accuse me, at any rate, of complicity. If she cannot, ...
— The Parasite • Arthur Conan Doyle
... their breakfast, Thaddeus explained. "I told Bradley that you were a sceptic on the subject of his jewel," he said, "and he offered to prove that she was eighteen carats fine by taking me home with him, an unexpected guest, by which act he would test her value to my satisfaction. ...
— Paste Jewels • John Kendrick Bangs
... joy of my discovery, I need a confidant; and it is to the sceptic Hamilcar that I address myself with all the ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... "Monsieur is a sceptic. It comes with the knowledge of cities. There are even such in little Bel-Oiseau, since the evil time when they took to engrossing the contracts of good citizens on the skins of the poor jew-beards that give us flesh and milk. It is horrible as the Tannery of Meudon. ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... opinion. 'Opinion,' said he, 'corrupts the saliva—that's why men took to pepper. Scepticism is the only philosophy that doesn't bring a taste in the mouth.' 'Nay,' says poor Lorenzo de' Medici, 'you must be out there, Luigi. Here is this untainted sceptic, Matteo Franco, who wants hotter sauce than any of us.' 'Because he has a strong opinion of himself,' flashes out Luigi, which is the original egg of all other opinion. He a sceptic? He believes in the immortality of his own verses. He is such a logician ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... Fontenelle prepared this remarkable dose with a touch which reminds us of Voltaire, was being administered in the same Cartesian period, and with similar precautions, by Bayle. Like Fontenelle, this great sceptic, "the father of modern incredulity" as he was called by Joseph de Maistre, stood between the two centuries and belonged to both. Like Fontenelle, he took a gloomy view of humanity; he had no faith in that goodness of human nature which was to be a characteristic dogma of the age ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... personage to describe the character of some person of whom we are writing. It is much more expressive now to describe a person as a "doubter" than as a "doubting Thomas," though the latter phrase may serve to show that the writer knows something of his New Testament. The first man who called a sceptic a "doubting Thomas" was certainly a witty and cultivated person; but this cannot now be said of the use of this hackneyed phrase. Again, it is better to say a "traitor" than a "Judas," a "wise man" than a "Solomon," a "tyrant" than a "Nero," ...
— Stories That Words Tell Us • Elizabeth O'Neill
... of doubt. A couple of centuries ago, those who held them would have burnt alive those who did not. Now, they have to console themselves with the comforting thought of the fire that shall never be quenched. But even Job's patience could not stand the self-sufficiency of his pious reprovers. The sceptic too may retort: 'No doubt but ye are the people, and ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... then thyself, presume not God to scan; The proper study of mankind is Man. Placed on this isthmus of a middle state, A being darkly wise, and rudely great: With too much knowledge for the sceptic side, With too much weakness for the stoic's pride, He hangs between; in doubt to act, or rest; In doubt to deem himself a god, or beast; In doubt his mind or body to prefer; Born but to die, and reasoning but to err; 10 Alike ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... Lindsay, much amused, "if you are such a sceptic, you will take no comfort in anything at the Abbey, you will not believe anything ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... Such individuals meet in comradeship, and pass together along the open roads of the world. No one is excluded because of his poverty or his sins; there is room in the ideal America for everybody except the doubter and sceptic. Whitman does not linger over the smaller groups of human society, like the family. He is not a fireside poet. He passes directly from his strong persons, meeting freely on the open road, to his conception of "these States." One of his typical ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... spoke of that volley of musketry I glanced across with a shudder at Beauchamp, and the look of stony horror on that handsome sceptic's face was ...
— Clairvoyance • Charles Webster Leadbeater
... state of mental incapacity, was induced by a priest named Holdstock to make a testament of his property in favour of the Church of Rome, and of certain charities favoured by that church. It was given in evidence that the man had been a sceptic nearly all his life, hated priests, and was especially prejudiced against the peculiar disposition of his property, which the priests alleged that he had actually made upon his death-bed. A Roman Catholic physician, one Gasquet, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... am a sceptic as well as Helvetius, but of a more moderate complexion. There is no harm in telling mankind that there is not so much divinity in the Aeneid as they imagine; but, even if I thought so, I would not preach that virtue and friendship are mere names, and resolvable into self-interest; ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole
... critical analysis of passion, at first playfully tender in its irony, but later, under the influence of his critical antagonism to Brunetiere, growing keener, stronger, and more bitter. In 'Thais' he has undertaken to show the bond of sympathy that unites the pessimistic sceptic to the Christian ascetic, since both despise the world. In 'Lys Rouge', his greatest novel, he traces the perilously narrow line that separates love from hate; in 'Opinions de M. l'Abbe Jerome Coignard' he has given us the most radical breviary ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... a lancet stuck into a bladder came the heckling. Denson, that indolent, liberal-minded sceptic, did most of the questioning. He lay contorted in a chair, with his ugly head very low, his legs crossed and his left boot very high, and he pointed his remarks with a long thin hand and occasionally adjusted the unstable glasses that hid his watery ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... his heavenward flight Potts was brought low. At the very nethermost point of his downward swoop Solon Denney was raised to a height so dizzy that even the erstwhile sceptic spirit of Westley Keyts abased itself before him, frankly conceding that diplomacy's innocent and mush-like surface might conceal springs of ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... readers discern any such corner-stone, or even so much as what Teufelsdroeckh is looking at? He exclaims, 'Or hast thou forgotten Paris and Voltaire? How the aged, withered man, though but a Sceptic, Mocker, and millinery Court-poet, yet because even he seemed the Wisest, Best, could drag mankind at his chariot-wheels, so that princes coveted a smile from him, and the loveliest of France would have laid their hair beneath his feet! All Paris was one vast Temple of Hero-worship; though ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... he interposed. He was a sceptic who called himself agnostic. The mystery of earth and heaven might be interpreted, but always in terms of science; yet he did not fancy the superior manner in which this charlatan flouted the supernatural. He had heard of her miracles—and doubted them. ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... shone over us in the sky, looking down as if surprised at our strange proceedings. Dr. Simson did nothing but utter subdued laughs under his breath. "I thought as much," he said. "It is just the same with tables and all other kinds of ghostly apparatus; a sceptic's presence stops everything. When I am present nothing ever comes off. How long do you think it will be necessary to stay here? Oh, I don't complain; only when ...
— The Open Door, and the Portrait. - Stories of the Seen and the Unseen. • Margaret O. (Wilson) Oliphant
... this metaphor. Burns was, in religious matters, one of a very large class. Many men rid their intellects of a superstition, without being able to resist its power over their feelings. Even so profound a sceptic as Renan has admitted that his life is guided by a faith he no longer possesses. And we are all familiar with ...
— Prisoner for Blasphemy • G. W. [George William] Foote
... Some spellings were altered. "To-day" and "To-morrow" are spelled "today" and "tomorrow." Some words containing the letters "ise" in the original text, such as "idealise," had these letters changed to "ize," such as "idealize." "Sceptic" was changed to "skeptic." ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... which the rest of the world, 'in the superfluity of their wits,' were likely to make upon him. Men are annoyed at what puzzles them; they think what they cannot easily understand to be full of danger. Many a sceptic has stood, as he supposed, firmly rooted in the categories of the understanding which Hegel resolves into their original nothingness. For, like Plato, he 'leaves no stone unturned' in the intellectual world. Nor can we deny that he is unnecessarily difficult, or that his own ...
— Sophist • Plato
... As I am no sceptic with regard to the nature of things, so neither am I as to their existence. That a thing should be really perceived by my senses, and at the same time not really exist is to me a plain contradiction; since I cannot prescind or abstract even in thought, the existence of a sensible thing ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... by the sword he knew to be impossible. What he had hoped for was the gradual winning of England to a sense of its worth. But every day the current of opinion ran more strongly against it. The army stood alone in its purpose. Papist and sceptic, mystic and ceremonialist, latitudinarian and Presbyterian, all were hostile. The very pressure of Cromwell's system gave birth to new forms of spiritual and intellectual revolt. Science, rationalism, ...
— History of the English People, Volume VI (of 8) - Puritan England, 1642-1660; The Revolution, 1660-1683 • John Richard Green
... first as friends of the Allens, and not knowing their devilish tendencies. God had, however, he hoped, mercifully protected him. If it had not been for God's grace, where might he not have been that day? It was true that they were disciples of the French sceptic; his likeness was on the walls; his books were on the bookshelves! Mr. George Allen had been in the habit of associating not only with Mr. Coleman, but with the daughter, and with the daughter ...
— The Revolution in Tanner's Lane • Mark Rutherford
... Moses, and those of Ezekiel, referred to, have never yet been fulfilled, is undeniable; and that they will be fulfilled, will not be doubted by a Christian; and can hardly be disbelieved by a Sceptic, who will take the trouble to compare the history of "the eternal people,"[fn86] with the predictions concerning it which have been fulfilled ...
— Five Pebbles from the Brook • George Bethune English
... that she was in reality a demon, and not a being of earth. At the same time, my readers must thoroughly understand that the doctor, when he meddles in spiritualism, is a man who is governed in his narratives by an intelligent faculty of criticism which borders on the purely sceptic; he delights in the display of instances where an element of trickery may be detected; no one better than himself can distinguish between bogus and bogey, and he takes pleasure in directing special attention to his extraordinary good judgment ...
— Devil-Worship in France - or The Question of Lucifer • Arthur Edward Waite
... call the singular episode which I observed last summer, and which I have endeavored to picture as true to the life as possible in the accompanying presentment The sceptic will perhaps remark on examination that the scene is characterized by somewhat too free a license to warrant the ideal of a "picnic." But he is hypercritical. There are picnics and picnics—picnics of high and of low degree. Do I not recall more than one notorious ...
— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson
... as I understand it, is the consensus gentium theory applied to the Virgin Mary. In defence of this thesis, the book has been made to bristle with quotations; they stand out like quills upon the porcupine, ready to impale the adventurous sceptic. Pliny and Virgil and the Druids and Balaam's Ass are invoked as foretelling Her birth; the Old Testament—that venerable sufferer, as Huxley called it—is twisted into dire convulsions for the same ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... indelible impress she left upon him was like to that given by Jochebed to her son Moses. He never wholly escaped from her hallowed influence, although he descended into vicious living and became a notorious and blatant blasphemer, sceptic, ...
— Trail Tales • James David Gillilan
... I want to make is that if the sceptic plays a Bickleyan part as regards what has been written, it seems probable that his attitude will be accentuated as regards that which it still remains for me to write. If so, I cannot help it, and must decline entirely to water ...
— When the World Shook - Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley and Arbuthnot • H. Rider Haggard
... expressions, or happy remarks, applicable to the generality of topics which fall under discussion. He is extremely sensitive, easily disconcerted, and resents want of tact in others, because he is so liable to suffer from any breach of it. A sceptic in religion, and by no means austere in morals, he views with indulgence all faults except those which are committed against society, but he looks upon a bore with unconcealed aversion. He is attached to a few persons ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... part. He beheld his father ponderously grinding sand, his mother fierily breaking butterflies, his brother labouring at the pleasures of the Hawbuck with the ardour of a soldier in a doubtful battle; and the vital sceptic looked on wondering. They were careful and troubled about many things; for him there seemed not even one thing needful. He was born disenchanted, the world's promises awoke no echo in his bosom, the world's activities and the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... some Austrian critics, of much correctness and acumen, who doubted about acknowledging the French republic. I do not mean that the Christmas Carol is quite as brilliant or self-evident as the sun at noonday; but it is so spread over England by this time, that no sceptic, no Fraser's Magazine,—no, not even the godlike and ancient Quarterly itself (venerable, Saturnian, big-wigged dynasty!) could review it down. "Unhappy people! deluded race!" One hears the cauliflowered god exclaim, mournfully shaking the powder ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... faith we know next to nothing. One of them, Stilpo, was charged with impiety on account of a bad joke about Athene, and convicted, although he tried to save himself by another bad joke. As his point of view was that of a downright sceptic, he was no doubt an atheist according to the notions of antiquity; in our day he would be called an agnostic, but the information that we have about his religious standpoint is too slight to ...
— Atheism in Pagan Antiquity • A. B. Drachmann
... some surprise at the sight of a piece of shagreen which hung on the wall behind his chair. It was only about the size of a fox's skin, but it seemed to fill the deep shadows of the place with such brilliant rays that it looked like a small comet, an appearance at first sight inexplicable. The young sceptic went up to this so-called talisman, which was to rescue him from all points of view, and he soon found out the cause of its singular brilliancy. The dark grain of the leather had been so carefully burnished and polished, the striped markings of the graining were so sharp ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... to confirm him in that gospel of the sceptic: 'There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... know it is in vain for me to dispute, I am no sceptic for to deny the Power that you have; I know that you have Power enough: Sir, I confess, I think it would have been for the kingdom's peace, if you would have taken the pains for to have shewn the lawfulness ...
— State Trials, Political and Social - Volume 1 (of 2) • Various
... say, I never ask anybody to believe me; the more so as I was once an absolute sceptic myself. As I see it now, I was prejudiced. The mere fact that spiritual seances and the services of a medium involved the payment of money condemned the whole thing in my eyes. I did not realize, as I do now, that these medii, like anybody else, have got to live; otherwise ...
— Frenzied Fiction • Stephen Leacock
... the happiest effect. Old Keskarrah alone used boldly to express his disbelief of a Supreme Deity, and state that he could not credit the existence of a Being, whose power was said to extend every where, but whom he had not yet seen, although he was now an old man. The aged sceptic is not a little conceited, as the following exordium to one of his speeches evinces: "It is very strange that I never meet with any one who is equal in sense to myself." The same old man, in one of his communicative moods, related to us the following tradition. The earth had been formed, ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 2 • John Franklin
... dealing with the subject is to convince the sceptic that there is anything to explain. Nowadays, the notion that a right is valuable is almost identical with the notion that it may be turned into money by selling it. But it was not always so. Before you can sell a right, ...
— The Common Law • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
... of Alexander the Great, whose expedition into Asia he joined. He appears, as far as his philosophy went, to have been an universal sceptic. He impeached, however, none of the chief principles of morality, but, regarding Socrates as his model, directed all his endeavours towards the production in his pupils of a firm ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... of volumes of "Apologetics" are a waste of ink and paper. If they could all be kindled into a huge bonfire, they would shed more light than they ever did before. It is not our business to answer every sceptic who shies a stone at the solid fortress of truth in which God places His ambassadors. If Tobiah and Sanballat are challenging us to come down into the plain, and meet them on their level, our answer must ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... home nearly a week afterwards, and was perfectly astounded when told by his wife and family what he had been doing on that particular evening; and, although previous to that date he was a thorough sceptic as to clairvoyance, he frankly admitted that my clairvoyant was perfectly correct in every particular. He also informed us that the book referred to was a new one, which he had purchased after he had left his home, ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... great faith which forced him to become a satirist, because he could not endure to see all his pure ideals and the possibilities of perfection soiled and trampled upon by thoughtless mechanics, aimless mockers and babbling reformers. The humorist may be—and very often is—a sceptic, a pessimist, a nihilist; the satirist is invariably a believer, an optimist, an idealist. For let this dangerous man only come face to face, not with his enemies, but with his ideals, and you will see—as in "Atta Troll"—what a generous friend, what an ardent lover, what a great poet ...
— Atta Troll • Heinrich Heine
... character of the negroes than their conduct on so joyous and trying an occasion, as what they have exhibited during the brief period of their political regeneration. It may be considered as an earnest of their future peaceable demeanor; the disbelief of the sceptic will thus be put to the blush, and the apprehensions of the timid allayed. The first of August has passed, and with it the conduct of the people has been such as to convince the most jealous, as well as the ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... its compensations for some one. The pitiable arrival of Mr. Levinski at "The Duke's Head," unrecognised and with his fur coat slightly ruffled, might make a sceptic of the most devout optimist, and yet Eustace Merrowby can never look back upon that evening without a sigh of thankfulness; for to him it was the beginning of his career. The story has often been told since—in ...
— Happy Days • Alan Alexander Milne
... sceptic," said one good man. "He hates the truth with all his heart, as much that he writes plainly shows. His influence in the community is very bad, and it is growing worse ...
— The Printer Boy. - Or How Benjamin Franklin Made His Mark. An Example for Youth. • William M. Thayer
... write at length upon this man. He was not a Sceptic as you may imagine, nor had he adopted the Lucretian form of Epicureanism. Not a bit of it. He was a hearty Atheist, with Positivist leanings. I further found that he had married a woman older, wealthier, and if possible uglier than ...
— First and Last • H. Belloc
... not imagine an eternity of accomplished facts. It is, perhaps, for this reason that doubt of immortality never really comes to youth. One of the few things which our friend still believes is that every sceptic who deals honestly with his only history must be aware of an hour, almost a moment, of waning youth, when the vague potentiality of disbelief became a living doubt, thence-forward to abide with him till death resolve it. Endless not-being is unthinkable ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... read it to herself. And it was the sound of it that the mistress liked as she listened, at least she was not thinking of the sense, but of the ease and readiness with which the long words glided from the child's lips. It was about "the sceptic" that she was reading—the man who had striven to make this fair ...
— Allison Bain - By a Way she knew not • Margaret Murray Robertson
... serious charge of atheism could be brought against the poets at the other end of the century. John Davidson was a thoroughgoing materialist, and the other members of the school, made sceptic by their admiration for the sophistic philosophy of Wilde, followed Davidson in his views. But this hardly strengthens the philosopher's charge that materialistic philosophy characterizes poets as a class, for the curiously limited poetry which the 1890 ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... I believe, exhausted itself amongst the earliest disciples. Yet any one who has had to attend, as I have done, to copious objurgations, strewn with such appellations as "infidel" and "coward," must be a hardened sceptic indeed if he doubts the existence of a "gift of tongues" in the Churches of our time; unless, indeed, it should occur to him that some of these outpourings may have taken place after "the third hour of the day." I ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... his enjoyment, if he did enjoy. It was simply his way of cheating his creative faculty, which, though it had grown impotent, was still there, still restless. Altogether a melancholy, pitiable man—at once thorough-going sceptic and thorough-going idealist, the victim of that critical sense which says No to every impulse, and is always restlessly, and yet hopelessly, seeking the future through the ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... an expression used to denote a gentleman's stretching out his neck over a hedge, "to look before he leaped;"—a pause in his "vaulting ambition," which in the field doth occasion some delay and execration in those who may be immediately behind the equestrian sceptic. "Sir, if you don't choose to take the leap, let me!"—was a phrase which generally sent the aspirant on again; and to good purpose: for though "the horse and rider" might fall, they made a gap through which, and over him and his steed, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... having no meaning. Man is to bring himself back as far as he is able to the condition of a rational beast. He is to limit himself to the pursuit of pleasure, but of this he is to make a far-sighted calculation;—he is to be rationalized, secularized, animalized: or he is to be an amiable sceptic, better than his own philosophy, and not falling below the opinions ...
— Theaetetus • Plato
... le Festin de Pierre, a piece in which a nobleman—who is a libertine as well as a sceptic and a hypocrite—is brought upon the stage, was first acted in February, 1665, and raised such an outcry that it was also forbidden to be played. In spite of failing health and serious depression of spirits, Moliere continued to produce play after play; and some ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
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