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Rational  n.  A rational being.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Rational" Quotes from Famous Books



... No. Nobody can turn us out till my poor soul is turned out of my body. 'Tis life-hold, like Ambrose Winterborne's. But when my life drops 'twill be hers—not till then." His words on this subject so far had been rational and firm enough. But now he lapsed into his moaning strain: "And the tree will do it—that tree will soon be the ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy

... new presentation of the ancient Sun-God, with unmistakeable family likeness to his elder brothers. The Reverend Robert Taylor very rightly remarks, concerning this small historical possibility: "These are circumstances which fall entirely within the scale of rational possibility, and draw for no more than an ordinary and indifferent testimony of history, to command the mind's assent. The mere relation of any historian, living near enough to the time supposed to guarantee the ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant

... me, is wholly unlooked for, and unnecessary," he remarked, mildly. "From what Mrs. Clayton has told me, I had supposed that my disinterested care and assiduity with regard to your condition were about to meet their reward in your rational submission to the necessities of your case and mine. Resume your seat, I entreat you, and let us calmly discuss a matter that seems to agitate you so unduly. Perhaps I may be able to place it before you in a better light ere we have concluded our interview. You will sit down again, Miriam, will ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield

... to show with pride.... There in the peaceful little House in the Wood national disputes are settled, not by sacrificing the lives of thousands of innocent, helpless young men, not by creating thousands of widows and orphans, but by threshing out all matters relating to the dispute in a rational, calm, judicial and honorable way.... It seemed to me that this 20th century battleground, this quiet, peaceful House in the Wood, augured well for a new era, one in which our swords will indeed be turned into ploughshares and our spears into pruning hooks, and the angels of peace and ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper

... the treasures of science and the delights of learning. We welcome you to the transcendent sweets of domestic life, to the happiness of kindred, and parents, and children. We welcome you to the immeasurable blessings of rational existence, the immortal hope of Christianity, and ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck

... knowledge of the subject, and an assurance which I have never since assumed, I spoke to a large audience in Vicksburg on the question, Will America Absorb the Negro? I settled the question then and there to my own satisfaction, even if I did not convince the nation that my affirmative conclusion was rational. The "lecture" netted me my fare to Tuskegee, with a few dollars over, and brought me from Rev. O. P. Ross, pastor of the African Methodist Episcopal Church in Vicksburg, the offer of a scholarship at Wilberforce College at the expense of his church. I respectfully declined the offer, ...
— Tuskegee & Its People: Their Ideals and Achievements • Various

... much importance to the language of the Americans, when they manifest, in their daily conversations, the intention of maintaining the federal system adopted by their forefathers. A government retains its sway over a great number of citizens, far less by the voluntary and rational consent of the multitude, than by that instinctive, and to a certain extent involuntary agreement, which results from similarity of feelings and resemblances of opinion. I will never admit that men constitute a social body, simply because they obey the same head and the ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville

... to assist us in this case, while we are left to infer the peculiarities of instinct from its outward manifestations only. And moreover, the inquiry involves an understanding of the workings of the human mind; for it is only when viewed in contrast with the rational endowments of man that the character of instinct is best known. All other questions connected with the subject are subordinate to this one of the apparent ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various

... (I can see the whole thing quite plainly to-day, though it is five-and-forty years ago), exclaiming, "Then you are a fool, and if you were to die to-night you most certainly would be damned." I ask those who were brought up in a more kindly and more rational scheme of Christianity whether it is any wonder that those whose youth was spent in these gloomy shades should welcome the thought that there was no such being ...
— Science and Morals and Other Essays • Bertram Coghill Alan Windle

... and in the disproportionate weight assigned to the defensive as compared to the offensive factors in a given aggregate tonnage. Imagination, theory, a priori reasoning, is here at variance with rational historical precedent, which has established the necessity of numbers as well as of individual power in battle-ships, and demonstrated the superiority of offensive over defensive strength in military systems. These—and other—counterbalancing considerations ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan

... for showing emotion—who have thought them wanting in self-control—I went down and must needs throw myself into the melee, like a romantic fool! Did I do any good? They would have gone away without me I dare say.' But this was over-leaping the rational conclusion,—as in an instant her well-poised judgment felt. 'No, perhaps they would not. I did some good. But what possessed me to defend that man as if he were a helpless child! Ah!' said she, clenching her hands together, 'it is no wonder those people thought I was in love with him, after ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... V. We would leave the honey out, make a cream sauce from the stock, or, adding bouillon, tie same with a little flour and butter, and would call the dish Stewed Celery and Leeks. The ancient method is entirely rational because the mineral salts of the vegetables are preserved and utilized (invariably observed by Apicius) which today are often wasted by inexperienced cooks who discard these precious elements with the water in which ...
— Cooking and Dining in Imperial Rome • Apicius

... compare New England farmers with the Irish peasantry. We only present the contrast between these two classes of the Irish population as the result of unremitting toil on one side, and a more rational kind of life on the other. If we enter a New England church, containing a strictly rural assembly, and then visit another containing a class whose labor is lighter, and whose style of life is based upon different ideas, we shall ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various

... of the spell that was laid upon him. For the moment he ceased to be a rational being. He was exalted by emotion far out of himself. He experienced the sweetness of losing his own identity. It was as if a great wind had snatched him up into the universal ether, a region of warmth of colour and perfume. But he was ...
— The Deaves Affair • Hulbert Footner

... is, that they are constantly beginning at the wrong end: they fix on some one piece of information that they want to get, and devote a world of labour to hunting about in all directions for anything bearing on the subject; whereas the rational way obviously is, to have the whole existing mass of (valuable) knowledge classified, and then the inquirer would know where to look ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 49, Saturday, Oct. 5, 1850 • Various

... that piece of ground at no cheap rate, whereon Hannibal himself encamped his own regiment. Next, it is a lively and cheerful presage of our happy success and victory. For as in a body when the blood is fresh, the spirits pure and vigorous, not only to vital, but to rational faculties, and those in the acutest and the pertest operations of wit and subtlety, it argues in what good plight and condition the body is; so when the cheerfulness of the people is so sprightly up, as that it has not only wherewith ...
— A Book of English Prose - Part II, Arranged for Secondary and High Schools • Percy Lubbock

... By every rational argument the murderer must still be in the room. Yet Bobby foresaw that, as always, no one would be found, that nothing would be unearthed to explain the succession of tragic mysteries. While Graham ...
— The Abandoned Room • Wadsworth Camp

... general recognition of that which makes sacrifice rational. It is because he conceives this presupposition to be mistaken, that Lucretius declares the practices and fears which are founded upon it to be folly. It is the same with all that is practically based upon the expectation of a life beyond the grave. ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry

... by stone its columns and its capitol may moulder and crumble; all other names which adorn its annals may be forgotten; but as long as human hearts shall anywhere pant, or human tongues shall anywhere plead, for a true, rational, constitutional liberty, those hearts shall enshrine the memory, and those tongues prolong the fame, of George Washington! ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick

... No. Rational. Field Commanders must be realists. The job comes first. In this case, the job of defeating the enemy.... But what does that have to do with us? Nothing, eh? You're right. Sometimes I like to talk, and I suppose that's one of my privileges. I'm not the idealist ...
— General Max Shorter • Kris Ottman Neville

... fain ascend to the height of science, let its first and principal study be to know itself. Full knowledge of the rational spirit is a great and high mountain. This mountain transcends all the peaks of all mundane sciences, and looks down upon all the philosophy and all the science of the world from on high. Could Aristotle, could Plato, could the great band of philosophers ...
— The Cell of Self-Knowledge - Seven Early English Mystical Treaties • Various

... what he had witnessed, by this sudden change of manner, but glad to find the old man seemingly rational, stated the situation in regard to the mill site. Old Malcolm seemed to understand perfectly, and accepted with willingness the colonel's proposition to give him a certain amount of stock in the new company for the release of such rights as he might possess ...
— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt

... wits. Every citizen that could possibly get out of the place was grabbing his valuables and fleeing the city on every train. The Cabinet officers were running hither and thither, not able to form a sensible or rational idea. Had it been possible to have evacuated the city, that would have been done. A Confederate prison or a hasty gibbet stared Staunton in the face, and he was sending telegrams like lightning over the land. Lincoln was the only one who seemingly had not lost his head. ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert

... every moral and social virtue. Impressed with a conviction of this important truth, a number of the members of St. John's congregation, willing to give every aid within their power toward the establishment and support of a Rational System of Education, have formed themselves into a Society ...
— James Cutbush - An American Chemist, 1788-1823 • Edgar F. Smith

... portion as himself.—Adieu: I have already written enough to convince you I have neither acquired the Gallomania, nor forgotten my friends in England; and I conclude with a wish a propos to my subject—that they may long enjoy the rational liberty they possess and ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady

... As an author, philanthropist, traveller, artist, and one of the strongest advocates of freedom and liberty for the oppressed of both sexes, and of her suffering sisters especially, she was an honour to the time and to womanhood. The women of the old world found in her a powerful, sympathizing, yet rational champion; just in her arguments in their behalf, able in her statements of their needs, and thoroughly interested in ...
— Memories and Anecdotes • Kate Sanborn

... be rational and rightly apprehended: for, as I myself know by too certain experience, there is no so sweet consolation in the loss of friends as the conscience of having had no reserve or secret for them, and to have had with them a perfect and entire communication. ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne

... your most rational scheme should be, to turn inn-keeper upon some of the great roads: you might have an elegant sign painted of Apollo and the Muses, and entertainment for men and horses, by THE HONOURABLE ANDREW ERSKINE, would be something very unusual, and could not fail to bring numbers of people to ...
— Boswell's Correspondence with the Honourable Andrew Erskine, and His Journal of a Tour to Corsica • James Boswell

... been lit, we all fell to work with a zeal worthy a more rational cause; and, as the glare fell upon our persons and implements, I could not help thinking how picturesque a group we composed, and how strange and suspicious our labors must have appeared to any interloper who, by chance, might have ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... is based on two grounds; first, the right of every rational being to become a "Priest unto himself," and by the test of enlightened reason, to form his own unbiased judgment of all things natural and spiritual: second, that the reputation of the Bishops who extracted these books from the original New Testament, under the ...
— The Forbidden Gospels and Epistles, Complete • Archbishop Wake

... charge Bunyan with a superstitious notion of dreams, whether asleep or as if asleep. Such a mode of interpretation as he recommends is both rational and scriptural. To dream awake is thus explained—"They dream on in a course of ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... such an innumerable multitude of stars, which are so many suns, is merely a means for the existence of earths, and of human beings upon them, from whom a heavenly kingdom [may be formed]. From these considerations a rational man cannot but think that a means so immense to an end so great was not provided for a human race, and a heaven from them, from one earth only. What would this be to the Divine, who is infinite, and to whom thousands, yea, myriads, of earths, all filled with inhabitants, would ...
— Earths In Our Solar System Which Are Called Planets, and Earths In The Starry Heaven Their Inhabitants, And The Spirits And Angels There • Emanuel Swedenborg

... rambling letter, long, affectionate, playful and commanding all at once. She bade Cassandra put her creatures in the charge of a groom, and come to them for a week or so. They would go and hear some music together. Cassandra's dislike of rational society, she said, was an affectation fast hardening into a prejudice, which would, in the long run, isolate her from all interesting people and pursuits. She was finishing the sheet when the sound she was anticipating all the time actually ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf

... morality in an age demanding social morality, to pride one's self on the results of personal effort when the time demands social adjustment, is utterly to fail to apprehend the situation"; I say we do not "know, at last, that we can only discover truth by rational and democratic interest in life." Why did you quote these sentences with approval? There is no distinction between individual and social morality, or, if there is, the order is quite the other way. All this democratic ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More

... passions, Sir Jairvis," answered Magrath, looking aside, to avoid the keen glance of the other, "hope is generally considered, by all rational men, as the most treacherous and delusive; I may add, of all denominations or divisions of hope, that which decides on life is the most unsairtain. We all hope to live, I'm thinking, to a good old age, and yet how many of us live just ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper

... retirement from public life, in 1809, Mr. Jefferson lived as became a wise man. Surrounded by affectionate friends, his ardor in the pursuit of knowledge undiminished, with uncommon health and unbroken spirits, he was able to enjoy largely the rational pleasures of life, and to partake in that public prosperity which he had so much contributed to produce. His kindness and hospitality, the charm of his conversation, the ease of his manners, the extent of his acquirements, ...
— Thomas Jefferson • Edward S. Ellis et. al.

... promote and achieve the protection, scientific study, and rational use of Antarctic seals, and to maintain a satisfactory balance within ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... creditable and industrious endeavors, to expend, upon the aforesaid farm, in solid and valuable improvements, a sum of seven hundred pounds and upwards, in building, draining, enclosing, and manuring—all of which improvements transcendantly elevated the value of the farm in question, as the whole rational population of the country could depose to—me ipso teste quoque. That when this now highly emendated tenement was brought to the best condition of excellence of which it was susceptible, the middleman landlord—va miseris agricolis!—called upon him for an elevation of rent, which ...
— The Black Prophet: A Tale Of Irish Famine • William Carleton

... tending my fruit trees and in those other rural occupations in which their sex may best take part. Their parents have never enjoyed very good health; nor were the children particularly robust in their infancy, yet by a rational physical education, they have been made such as ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant

... give some entertainments soon afterwards. The minister and his wife, with some other friends, came to tea, and the conversation turned on parties and the dullness of winter evenings if no amusements were provided. I maintained that rational human beings ought not to be dependent upon childish games, but ought to be able to occupy themselves and interest themselves with talk. Talk, I said—not gossip, but talk—pleases me better than chess or forfeits; and the lines of ...
— The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford • Mark Rutherford

... often reprove her, when she found her too grave or melancholy; give her sprightly lectures about good-humor and rational mirth; and not unfrequently fall a-crying herself, to the great discredit of her lecture. Those tears endeared her the more ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb

... enough of the preacher's words we could make out at first. "Who are your chiefs?" came the question at the end of a fervid harangue, and immediately all further rational talk was drowned in uproar. "We have no chiefs," the people shouted, "we are done with chiefs; we are all equal here. Take away your silly magic. You may kill us with magic if you choose, but rule us you shall not. Nor shall the other priests rule. Nor Phorenice. Nor anybody. We are ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne

... Chicago on the law of God doctrine. And yet he stands his ground against both the North and the South without flinching. He defies his enemies. He has the very sanity that you have extolled here at this table. I think he has the only rational solution for this slavery question. He is a very ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters

... her world, this crisis in the history of Judah herself, Jeremiah remains the one constant, rational, and far-seeing power in the national life. But at what terrible cost to himself! His experience is a throng of tragic paradoxes. Faithful to his mission, every effort he makes to rouse his people to its ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith

... ceased to be needed; and so, though a man in a civilised community has very little to dread, he is still haunted by an irrational sense of insecurity and precariousness. And thus many of our fears arise from old inheritance, and represent nothing rational or real at all, but only an old and savage ...
— Where No Fear Was - A Book About Fear • Arthur Christopher Benson

... memorable Meeting was called, with Design that the Inhabitants might have the Opportunity, of expressing their Sense calmly and dispassionately; for it is from such a Temper of Mind, that we are to expect a rational, manly and successful Opposition to the ruinous Plans of an abandoned Administration: And it is for this Reason alone, that the petty Tyrants of this Country have always dreaded and continue still to dread, a regular Assembly ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, vol. III. • Samuel Adams

... would place him in history where no other act can possibly place him. They would thus put themselves in the track of the best guide they can follow, they would soon overtake it, become its guide in turn, and lead to the wholesome modifications wanting in that model, and necessary to constitute a rational government. Should they attempt more than the established habits of the people are ripe for, they must lose all, and retard indefinitely the ultimate object of their aim. These, Madam, are my opinions; but I wish to know yours, which I am sure ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... another possible explanation, namely, telepathy, in a real hypnotic condition. Even if Dr. Luys's experiments were genuine this would be the rational explanation. They were a case of suggestion ...
— Complete Hypnotism: Mesmerism, Mind-Reading and Spiritualism • A. Alpheus

... beast give anyone rational advice?" thought the king's son, and let fly at the fox, but he missed him, and he stretched out his tail and ran quick into the wood. Then the young man went on his way, and toward evening he came to the village and there stood the two taverns; ...
— Holiday Stories for Young People • Various

... Malone felt the faint stirrings of hope. Perhaps they would turn up a telepath yet who was completely sane and rational. ...
— That Sweet Little Old Lady • Gordon Randall Garrett (AKA Mark Phillips)

... jealous and most unamiable and ill-tempered tyrant of the universe with the Absolute of Aristotle!" cried Euergetes; "he stigmatises most of what you and I and all rational Greeks require for the enjoyment of life as sin—sin upon sin. And yet if my easily persuadable brother governed at Alexandria, I believe the shrewd priests might succeed in stamping him as a worshipper of that ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... new teacher, Robert for the first time was obliged to study a rational system of technic and tone production. He was also expected to learn harmony correctly, but strangely enough he seemed to take no interest in it, even saying he thought such knowledge useless. He held to this foolish idea for some time, not ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower

... science are employed for the elucidation of human anatomical facts, the result in this special case, like that established through the study of the characteristics of living things in general, is the proof that evolution gives the most rational and natural explanation of the observed data. This being true, the naturalist who turns from purely structural matters to human intellect and its history, finds well-tried methods of inquiry already available, and he approaches his further studies with a conviction that evolution, having ...
— The Doctrine of Evolution - Its Basis and Its Scope • Henry Edward Crampton

... or certain calamities, and what is he to do? stand there in the open, with the pelting of the pitiless storm coming down upon him? The man is an idiot if he is not afraid. And what is to calm those rational fears, the fear of wrath, of life, of death, of what lies beyond death? You cannot whistle them away. You cannot ignore them always. You cannot grapple with them in your own strength. 'Only believe,' ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... dear,' assented Fanny, as she dried her eyes. 'Let us talk about it. I am rational again now, and you shall advise me. Will you advise me, my ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens

... Constantinople: the former, the only expedient which can be adopted for the moment, but in its nature temporary, imperfect, and liable to intrigue: the latter, natural, secure, and lasting. It is to this event that all the rational hopes of European politicians should be finally directed. Yet, while the Turk retains possession we must adhere to him; for treaties must be rigidly observed, and no policy is safe that is not strictly honest. But if the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various

... "Better to be a rational creature," he added then, after ringing a small bell on the table, "and accept your natural destiny. But you are ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens

... they will want to enjoy it immediately, and will tolerate no deception practiced on their expectations. In this violent state, fired by boundless expectations, all their whims appear reasonable and all their opinions rational. They are no longer able to find faults with or control themselves. In their brain, overflowing with emotions and enthusiasm, there is no room but for one intense, absorbing, fixed idea. Each is confident and over-confident in his own opinion; ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... as Christians or even as rational and immortal beings, we cannot do. I know, indeed, that many who profess to be the disciples of Christ, actually do less than this. I know there are hundreds and thousands who are called by his worthy name, and who seem to be almost above the liability to do that ...
— The Young Woman's Guide • William A. Alcott

... is what the doctor said, you know. Good-bye!" and Jess took her big basket and started on what John used feebly to call her "rational undertaking." ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard

... the world with him as his wife. And so he must give her up. For he believed that, in him, the instinct of moral law had been too carefully developed ever to be deliberately ignored; he still believed marriage to be not only a rational social procedure, not only a human compromise and a divine convention, but the only possible sanctuary where love might dwell, and ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers

... help it—at Barbara's face. He went on with his reminiscences. Barbara nearly wept, whilst I, though displeased with Liosha for introducing such an incongruous element into my family circle, took the rational course of deriving from the fellow considerable entertainment. Jaffery would have done the same as myself, had not his responsibility as Liosha's guardian weighed heavily upon him. He frowned, and ate in silence, vastly. ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke

... must have our servants and motors and food and furniture and newspapers, even our sport. The golf links and the hunting field have been well-nigh deserted since the war, but they are beginning to get back their votaries because out-door sport has become a necessity, and a very rational necessity, with numbers of men who have to work otherwise under unnatural and exacting conditions. That is one factor of the situation. The other affects London more especially, but through London it influences the rest of the country ...
— When William Came • Saki

... rocks, and noble trees abounded, and exquisite residences peeped out through the woods, giving evidences of high civilisation. Elegance of taste and perfect domestic arrangements supplied every form of rational comfort and enjoyment. My old friend Sir John Ross, of Arctic celebrity, was settled at Stockholm as chief consul for Her Majesty. He introduced me to several of the leading English merchants, from whom I received much kind attention. Mr. Erskine invited me to spend a day or two at his beautiful ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth

... putting to the tryal that reasoning Faculty, with which he had endued his Creature. Adam urges, in this Divine Colloquy, the Impossibility of his being happy, tho he was the Inhabitant of Paradise, and Lord of the whole Creation, without the Conversation and Society of some rational Creature, who should partake those Blessings with him. This Dialogue, which is supported chiefly by the Beauty of the Thoughts, without other poetical Ornaments, is as fine a Part as any in the whole Poem: The more the Reader examines the ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele

... absurdities, was entangled for a time by a rapturous infatuation and allowed a giddy woman with seductive habits and a silken voice to cajole, dominate, ridicule, and ignore him. His imploring theatrical appeals to her to come to him are piteously pathetic. The rational parts of his letters are without example in neat concise phrase, and portray a man possessed of great human virtues. It is when the love-storm attacks him that he flies into extravagances, such ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman

... be ready. For me I think that it is no more gross to delight in flavours than it is to delight in colours or harmonies, and one of my main reasons for dwelling on the delights of the sea lies in the fact that the voyager learns to take an exquisite, but quite rational, delight in the mere act of eating. I know that I ought to speak as though dinner were an ignoble institution; I know that the young lady who said, "Thanks—I rarely eat," represented a class who pretend to devote themselves to higher joys; but I decline to talk cant on ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman

... exact distinction between the several kinds of white blood corpuscles, a rational definition of leukaemia, polynuclear leucocytosis, and the knowledge of the appearances of degeneration and regeneration of the red blood corpuscles, and of their degeneration in haemoglobinaemic conditions. The same process, then, has gone ...
— Histology of the Blood - Normal and Pathological • Paul Ehrlich

... he said roughly. "What is the matter? What have I done now? I'm sick to death of these scenes and heroics; for God's sake try and behave like a rational woman. Do you want the whole hotel to ...
— The Second Honeymoon • Ruby M. Ayres

... who does at least a part of his sight-seeing after a rational and orderly fashion, there are pictures that will live in the memory always: the Madeleine, with the flower market just alongside; the green and gold woods of the Bois de Boulogne; the grandstand of ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb

... Mrs. Glegg, unable any longer to contain her spirit of rational remonstrance,—"Sophy, I wonder at you, fretting and injuring your health about people as don't belong to you. Your poor father never did so, nor your aunt Frances neither, nor any o' the family as I ever heard of. ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot

... whether General Booth's housing scheme is right. But any healthy person can see that banging brass cymbals together must be right. A page of statistics, a plan of model dwellings, anything which is rational, is always difficult for the lay mind. But the thing which is irrational any one can understand. That is why religion came so early into the world and spread so far, while science came so late into the world and has not spread at all. History unanimously attests the fact ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton

... after, Mr. Baxter, perhaps encouraged by Mr. Mather's book, published his own Certainty of the World of Spirits, with another testimony, 'That Mr. Mather's book would Silence any incredulity that pretended to be rational.' And Mr. Mather dispersed Mr. Baxter's book in New England, with the character of it, as a book ...
— Salem Witchcraft and Cotton Mather - A Reply • Charles W. Upham

... of neglected merit. The merit is oftentimes not understood. Be it ever so manifest, it cannot absorb men's attention. When it is really great, it has not been brought out by the hope of reward, any more than the kindest services by the hope of gratitude. In neither case is it becoming or rational to be clamorous ...
— Friends in Council (First Series) • Sir Arthur Helps

... rational conjectures and sage hypotheses many satisfactory deductions might be drawn; but I shall content myself with the simple fact stated in the Bible—viz., that Noah begat three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japhet. It is astonishing on what remote ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving

... yours or mine. What is, and shall be, everlastingly, so,—namely, the infallible truth of the lesson herein taught, and the actual effect of the life of St. Martin on the mind of Christendom,—is, very absolutely, the business of every rational being in ...
— Our Fathers Have Told Us - Part I. The Bible of Amiens • John Ruskin

... of heart. In these opinions my Father departed in no ways from the strict evangelical doctrine of the Protestant churches, but he held it in a mode and with a severity peculiar to himself. Now, it is plain that this state of heart, this voluntary deed of acceptance, presupposed a full and rational consciousness of the relations of things. It might be clearly achieved by a person of humble cultivation, but only by one who was fully capable of independent thought, in other words by a more or less adult person, The man ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse

... more be the interest of any one to wrong his fellow, to grow rich at the cost of the poverty and misery of another. Life must be prolonged both by removing many of the physical causes of death, and by making men more rational and religious, more willing and able to deny themselves those indulgences which are but ...
— Education and the Higher Life • J. L. Spalding

... indeed why children are not to be "silly." Are grown-up people always so rational in their amusements or irreproachable in their demeanour? "Let the child alone," poor Uncle Harry used to say; and once I overheard him mutter, "I've more patience with a young fool than an old one." Such training ...
— Kate Coventry - An Autobiography • G. J. Whyte-Melville

... you there? That's the cue international, Henceforth we'll hope, and we trust it may lead To colloquies pleasant, relations more rational. May "saucers" and tubes telephonic succeed In setting the world "by the ears," in a fashion Not meant by the men who invented that phrase. May nail-biting nagging and rancorous passion Die ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, March 28, 1891 • Various

... something else now that must be done well—and that is, to die," and he cheered up again. And however strange it may seem, beginning with the second morning in the fortress, he commenced devoting himself to gymnastics according to the unusually rational system of a certain German named Mueller, which absorbed his interest. He undressed himself completely and, to the alarm and astonishment of the guard who watched him, he carefully went through all the prescribed eighteen exercises. The fact that the guard watched him ...
— The Seven who were Hanged • Leonid Andreyev

... and rightly used, rational enjoyment, power, fame,—these are all worthy objects of ambition; but they are not the highest objects, and you may acquire them all without achieving true success. But if, whatever you seek, you put good will into all your actions, you are sure of the ...
— The New McGuffey Fourth Reader • William H. McGuffey

... nor scrupulously reserved, and hope that I have made my author's meaning accessible to many who before were frighted from perusing him, and contributed something to the publick, by diffusing innocent and rational pleasure. ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith

... are like this: they study themselves to the most shameful detail, and are for ever feeling the pulse of every sensation and reporting to themselves: "That's what I feel, that's what I think." A useful, rational occupation! No, if we only had some sensible men among us, that girl, that delicate soul, would not have run away from us, would not have slipped off like a fish to the water! What's the meaning ...
— On the Eve • Ivan Turgenev

... that foul reproach To all our virtuous boast! Humanity, England, is thine! not that false substitute, That meretricious sadness, which, all sighs For lark or lambkin, yet can hear unmoved The bloodiest orgies of blood-boltered France; Thine is consistent, manly, rational, Nor needing the false glow of sentiment 500 To melt it into sympathy, but mild, And looking with a gentle eye on all; Thy manners open, social, yet refined, Are tempered with reflection; gaiety, In her long-lighted halls, may lead the dance, Or wake the sprightly chord; yet nature, ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles

... scattered wits than he leaped to the floor. The interne and the nurses tried to force him back upon the cot, thinking that he was in the throes of a delirium, and it required his best efforts to convince them that he was quite rational. ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... more delightful to the first proprietor of Hyde Hall than thus to sit in company with congenial men at the flowing bowl; to begin in the enjoyment of rational conversation; to discuss literature and art and statecraft; to warm up to the telling of rare stories and the singing of good songs; and, in the end, to get his guests, or a portion of them, "under the table." On this occasion, after partaking of the viands and good ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall

... understand that second consequence (marked β) which has perplexed many men, viz., why it is that the Hindoos, in our own times; but, equally, why it is that the Greek and Roman idolaters of antiquity, never proselytized; no, nor could have viewed such an attempt as rational. Naturally, if a religion is doctrinal, any truth which it possesses, as a secret deposit consigned to its keeping by a revelation, must be equally valid for one man as for another, without regard to race or nation. For a doctrinal religion, therefore, ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey

... with Mr. Gallatin's speech in Bache's paper of March the 14th. It is worthy of being printed at the end of the Federalist, as the only rational commentary on the part of the constitution to which it relates. Not that there may not be objections, and difficult ones, to it, and which I shall be glad to see his answers to; but if they are never ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... and carefully provides for the comfort of her young long ere she lays her fragile egg. Even look at that vulgar-looking beetle, whose coarse form would banish the idea of any rational feeling existing in its brain—the Billingsgate fish-woman of its tribe in coarseness and rudeness of exterior (Scarabaeus carnifex)—see with what quickness she is running backward, raised almost upon her head, while with her bind legs she trundles a large ball; ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker

... at present so vehement a flourish of trumpets, and so prodigious a roll of the drum, whenever we are called upon to throw up our hats, and cry "Huzza" to the "March of Enlightenment," that, out of that very spirit of contradiction natural to all rational animals, one is tempted to stop one's ears, and say, "Gently, gently; LIGHT is noiseless: how comes 'Enlightenment' to make such a clatter? Meanwhile, if it be not impertinent, pray, where is Enlightenment marching to?" Ask that question ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... prey. Whereas, now, (so graciously has Providence interwoven our duty and our happiness together,) the result of this very necessity has been the ennobling of the human species, by giving it opportunities of improving its rational, as well as of exerting its ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey

... that he would tell her of his love, but he is not one to commit romantic absurdities. Poetry and the enthusiasm of love cover their blushing faces before the pure beauty of the lady. He silences the voice of his nature and remains correct. She, too, is always exact, always rational, always well behaved. I fear if they had formed a union, the young man would have risked freezing to death. I must confess that I can see nothing beautiful in this new beauty, who is as cold as the stone walls and floors she dreams of. Rather would I have the love ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 1, March 1906 • Various

... abundantly furnish the means to cultivate her rich fields. This is the only rational and lasting way to instruct and to enlighten her people, and to keep them enlightened, civilized, and industrious. By adopting this course also, that British capital, both commercial and manufacturing, which in one way or other finds ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various

... discovery of the anti-toxine for fatigue. "Just think!" exclaims Claparede, "a serum against fatigue. How valuable this would be!" From this point of view, I should say that the ponogenic co-efficients might find a more practical and rational application than that of the revelation of "programs"; indeed these co-efficients indicating the production of toxines would appear destined to determine the dose of anti-toxine necessary to nullify the evil effects resulting from each different subject ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori

... The only rational and effective treatment is castration, and when the disease is specific (glanders, tuberculosis), ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture

... shouldn't hunt for a rational reason for their act. They have merely hastened the step we were ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick

... and makes them sit up so bravely and look so shiny. And really, it isn't such dreadfully hard work to do, because everything fits together so well. The short skirts, for instance, that turn me into such a jolly prattling great-grandchild for the poor old gentleman, make me just a perfectly rational, contemporaneous-looking play-mate for the small Cambridge girl. I'm ...
— Molly Make-Believe • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott

... at opera: either as a means, whether expensive or not, of passing an evening with a very little intellectual trouble, some social eclat, and a certain amount of pleasure, or as a form of art, making serious and justifiable claims on the attention of rational people. These claims of opera are perhaps more widely recognised in England than they were some years ago; but there are still a certain number of persons, and among them not a few musical people, who hesitate to give opera a place beside ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild

... The rational policy recommended by Uncle George was carefully pursued. Everything was done to attract William to their mode of life, but no remark was made when he gave a preference to Indian customs. Still, he seemed moody, and at times sad. He carried within him a divided ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various

... Maine opposed the theory that this is a Government exclusively for white men. He remarked: "It is said that this amendment raises the general question of the antagonism of the races, which, we are told, is a well-established fact. It is said that no rational man, no intelligent legislator or statesman, should ever act without reference to that grand historical fact; and the Senator from Pennsylvania, [Mr. Cowan,] on a former occasion, asserted that this ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes

... weds a mere beauty, dooms dozens to grieve; Who marries an heiress, leaves hundreds undone; Who bears off an actress (she never took leave), Deprives a whole city of rational fun. But farewell the glances and nods of St. Nisbett; We list for her short ringing laughter in vain, And yet—bereaved London!—What think you of this bet? A hundred to one we ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann

... in the crops when harvested, hauling all the wood, besides tending two or three horses, a cow or two, and sawing wood for stoves, etc., while still attending school. For this I was compensated by the fact that there was never any scolding or punishing by my parents; no objection to rational enjoyments, such as fishing, going to the creek a mile away to swim in summer, taking a horse and visiting my grandparents in the adjoining county, fifteen miles off, skating on the ice in winter, or taking a horse and sleigh when there was snow ...
— Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete • Ulysses S. Grant

... full complement of eggs have been laid, and only at night, so that other birds shall not witness the robbery and fear for their own treasures. Mr. Henry George, in that book of his which has been the delight of so many millions of rational souls, advocates the destruction of all sharks and other large rapacious fishes, after which, he says, the ocean can be stocked with salmon, which would secure an unlimited supply of good wholesome food for the human race. No such high-handed measures are advocated ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson

... forever it will be true that Christ died for our sins, but the interpretations of this fact must be determined by the intelligence of the age. Men will never be content with simple facts, they must go behind them to find out an explanation of them. Man is a rational being, he must think, he will not sit down calmly in front of a fact and be content with looking it in the face, he will go behind it and ask how came it to be and what are its relations to other facts. That is what ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Volume 10 (of 10) • Various

... when she sat upon the tripod. Seeing genius to the best advantage in its work,—not always, but most frequently,—they are wisest who love the artist without demanding personal perfection. It is rational to conclude that the loftiest possible genius should be allied to the most perfect specimen of man, heart holding equal sway with head. A great man, however, need not be a great artist,—that is, of course, understood; but time ought to prove that the highest form of art can only emanate from ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various

... by the word and prayer, is owned by us."—Barclays Works, i, 213. "Both minister and magistrate are compelled to choose between his duty and his reputation."—Junius, p. 9. "All the sincerity, truth, and faithfulness, or disposition of heart or conscience to approve it, found among rational creatures, necessarily originate from God."—Brown's Divinity, p. 12. "Your levity and heedlessness, if it continue, will prevent all substantial improvement."—Brown's Inst., p. 147. "Poverty and obscurity will oppress him only who esteems it oppressive."—Ib. "Good sense ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown

... natural and almost universal is the instinct which leads us when in trouble to seek the support of some Higher power. No matter how wayward the human child may have been, how hardened by years of wrong, or arrogantly entrenched in some phase of rational philosophy, when the darkness of danger or sorrow blots out the light of earthly hopes, or hides the path which was trodden so confidently, then, with the impulse of frightened children whom night has suddenly ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe

... please the Lord and Father of the universe, is the supreme interest of created and dependent beings, as it is easily proved, has been universally confessed; and since all rational agents are conscious of having neglected or violated the duties prescribed to them, the fear of being rejected, or punished by God, has always burdened the human mind. The expiation of crimes, and renovation of the forfeited hopes ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson

... character.—Inferiority of the affective element.—Its principal manifestations: in the arts dealing with form; in poetry (transformation of sonorous into visual images); in myths with clear outline; in mechanical invention.—The dry and rational ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot

... the ghosts? We could think of nothing else. Was that what had happened to Eunice Arton? Did that explain the reported disappearances of the several other girls? Did this ghostly activity have some rational purpose—the stealing of young white women, all of them of unusual beauty? The conclusion was forced upon us, and with it the whole affair took on a complexion shudderingly sinister. It was not a mere panic of the people with which Bermuda now had to cope—not merely ...
— The White Invaders • Raymond King Cummings

... less useful domestic arts. Children in their play are just as enthusiastic, preoccupied, and noisy as white children, and the popularity of a game is subject, likewise, to spasmodic exclusiveness. While the particular inclination lasts no other game is held to be worth a rap for rational black boys to play, but the relish the more speedily degenerates. In the ordinary concerns of life a black boy is incapable of self-denial. His intensity for the time is almost pathetic; his revulsion comic. Hence the cycle of the games is brief. ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield

... his power of deliberate affection and of enduring self-sacrifice. The mother who took care of her brood in the corner of my window devoted to them the necessary time for accomplishing the laws which insure the preservation of her kind; but she obeyed an instinct, and not a rational choice. When she had accomplished the mission appointed her by Providence, she cast off the duty as we get rid of a burden, and she returned again to her selfish liberty. The other mother, on the contrary, will go on with her task as long as God shall leave her here below: ...
— An "Attic" Philosopher, Complete • Emile Souvestre

... obey. Plato, in constructing his ideal state, retains the walls between the small governing class, the warriors, and the mass of artisans, who are of no particular account but to get the work done. Castiglione, in his Book of the Courtier, declares that "there are many men who, although they are rational creatures, have only such share of reason as to recognize it, but not to possess or profit by it. These, therefore, are naturally slaves, and it is better and more profitable for them to ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake

... of speech. Every word surprised his followers; every stroke strengthened his position. He did not speak often, but he always answered Seymour, presenting a fine and sustained example of debate, keeping within strict rules of combat, and preserving a rational and argumentative tone, yet emphasising the differences between Hunker and Radical. Young could not be called brilliant, nor did he have the capacity or finish of Seymour as an orator; but he formed his own opinions, usually with great ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander

... teacher. Now it seemed that the girl was to be nothing to her and everything to her mother, and naturally she was disappointed and angry. We have all seen women—some of them women who read books, listen to lectures, and even take degrees, and must therefore be classed with rational beings—who will cry out and weep, and only stop short of tearing their raiment and putting ashes on their heads, at the loss of a pet dog, or cat, or canary; and Miss Churton had promised herself a greater pleasure from her intercourse with this girl, who had so won ...
— Fan • Henry Harford

... the three men. Nor did Daylight ever give the secret away, though that afternoon, leaning back in his stateroom on the Twentieth Century, his shoes off, and feet on a chair, he chuckled long and heartily. New York remained forever puzzled over the affair; nor could it hit upon a rational explanation. By all rights, Burning Daylight should have gone broke, yet it was known that he immediately reappeared in San Francisco possessing an apparently unimpaired capital. This was evidenced by the magnitude of the enterprises he engaged in, such as, for instance, Panama Mail, by ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London

... morally lower: in this goodness lies, in the opposite evil. If we isolate the individual and consider him apart, he may be said to attain goodness by the due ordering and control of his sensuous and passional nature by rational or spiritual ends. The result may be described, negatively, as the suppression of sensualism. But the positive description remains imperfect until we can say what the rational or spiritual principle is which is to weld all man's 'particular impulses' ...
— Recent Tendencies in Ethics • William Ritchie Sorley

... the exposure of the dental pulp inevitably led to its death and disintegration, and, by invasion of bacteria via the pulp canal, set up an inflammatory process which eventually caused the loss of the entire tooth. A rational system of therapeutics, in conjunction with proper antiseptic measures, has made possible both the conservative treatment of the dental pulp when exposed, and the successful treatment of pulp-canals when the pulp has been devitalized either by design or disease. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various

... acquire wisdom and training, To understand rational discourse, To receive training in wise conduct, In uprightness, justice, and rectitude, To impart discretion to the inexperienced, To the young knowledge and insight; That the wise man may hear and add to his learning, And ...
— The Origin & Permanent Value of the Old Testament • Charles Foster Kent

... reason up. The difference between the Christian theory and the materialistic theory is that the Christian begins with God, while the materialist begins with dull, inanimate matter. I know of no theory suggested as a substitute for the Bible theory that is as rational and as easy ...
— In His Image • William Jennings Bryan

... His youth gayly glided away; While rational pleasures and joy Attended his steps ...
— Phebe, The Blackberry Girl • Edward Livermore

... are mistaken; Lord Orville has too much good sense. Everything was then discussed in a rational manner. You are to be married privately, though not secretly, and then go to one of his Lordship's country seats: and poor little Miss Green and your brother, who have no house of their own, must go ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney

... these repulsive details have a place in driving home a conception of the cost to society of the immoral and irresponsible syphilitic. Syphilis is an infectious disease, dangerous to the individual and to society. If it is rational to quarantine a mouth and throat full of diphtheria germs, it is rational to quarantine a mouth and throat full of syphilitic germs at least until the germs are killed off for the time being. There can ...
— The Third Great Plague - A Discussion of Syphilis for Everyday People • John H. Stokes

... I'm trying to pull you out of the hole you've stumbled into. I say, in the name of all that's rational, why did you allow yourself to get ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow

... done much to spread this idea. A rational outdoor costume and a desire to be physically well also has helped "the outdoor girl" to be regarded as the highest type of womanhood. Only her grandmother sighs over ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller

... manifest, as if the dream of Eastern superstition had been realized, and a fierce and foul spirit had sought out and animated into a fiendish existence some beautiful sleeper of the grave. The other expression of the countenance of the apparition, that of agony, I accounted for on rational principles. Some years ago I saw, and was deeply affected by, a series of paintings representing the tortures of a Jew in the Holy Inquisition; and the expression of pain in the countenance of the victim I at once ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... Alexandria to Cairo in the special train which Kaid had sent for him, David watched the scene with grave and friendly interest. There was far, to go before those mud huts of the thousand years would give place to rational modern homes; and as he saw a solitary horseman spread his sheepskin on the ground and kneel to say his evening prayer, as Mahomet had done in his flight between Mecca and Medina, the distance between the Egypt of his desire and the ancient Egypt that ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... reasonable!—I think I'll go to church once a day often. I fancy it will go a great way towards making me a reformed man. To see multitudes of well-appearing people all joining in one reverend act. An exercise how worthy of a rational being! Yet it adds a sting or two to my former stings, when I think of my projects with regard to this charming creature. In my conscience, I believe, if I were to go constantly to church, I could ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson

... went, therefore, daily from Paris to Versailles, and attended their debates, generally till the hour of adjournment. Those of the Noblesse were impassioned and tempestuous. They had some able men on both sides, actuated by equal zeal. The debates of the Commons were temperate, rational, and inflexibly firm. As preliminary to all other business, the awful questions came on: Shall the States sit in one, or in distinct apartments? And shall they vote by heads or houses? The opposition ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... Westonhaugh, "that my ideas about Mohammedans are chiefly the result of reading the Arabian Nights, ever so long ago. It seems to me that they treat women as if they had no souls and no minds, and were incapable of doing anything rational if left to themselves. It is a man's religion. My uncle says so too, ...
— Mr. Isaacs • F. Marion Crawford

... must not be confounded with those wretched intriguers who were of no service to their employers, and were not unfrequently in the pay of both Bonaparte and the Bourbons. The Royalist committee, properly so called, was a very different thing. It consisted of men professing rational principles of liberty, such as the Marquis de Clermont Gallerande, the Abbe de Montesqiou, M. Becquet, and M. Royer Collard. This committee had been of long standing; the respectable individuals whose names I have just quoted acted upon a system hostile to the ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton



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