"Rational" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... where he had been sleeping, in a direction towards the sleeping-place of the natives, clearly indicated that it was not until he had arisen from his sleep, and had been closely pressing upon them, that they had fired the fatal shot. Such appeared to me to be the most plausible and rational explanation of this melancholy affair—I would willingly believe it to be the ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... visit on Whitelocke. He is a senator and one of the College of War, a person of great esteem and good parts; his conversation was full of civility; his discourse (in French) was rational, and for the most part upon matter of war, history, and the mathematics. In his company was an officer, his brother-in-law, who had served the King of Portugal in his late wars, and was a civil person, and seemed a gallant man. This Grave had been long bred up in the wars, ...
— A Journal of the Swedish Embassy in the Years 1653 and 1654, Vol II. • Bulstrode Whitelocke
... impunity that the millennium has come, for they will want to enjoy it immediately, and will tolerate no deception practiced on their expectations. In this violent state, fired by boundless expectations, all their whims appear reasonable and all their opinions rational. They are no longer able to find faults with or control themselves. In their brain, overflowing with emotions and enthusiasm, there is no room but for one intense, absorbing, fixed idea. Each is confident and over-confident in his own opinion; all become impassioned, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... their beds, in anticipating to-morrow; in considering what is going to happen, or what is not; in weighing their own future words and deeds given a variety of contingencies. For reason, which at first kept him, despite his disquiet, in the region of the rational, grew weaker with Henry as the night advanced; the shadow of trouble deepened as his weary wits lost their balance to combat it. The premonition was as formless and amorphous as a cloud, and, though he could not see any shape to his fear, or define its limitations, it grew darker ere ...
— The Grey Room • Eden Phillpotts
... discoveries are beside a way of thinking they have been long used to. Resolved, therefore, that, if ever I live to years, I will be impartial to hear the reasons of all pretended discoveries, and receive them, if rational, how long soever I have been used to another way of thinking. I am too dogmatical; I have too much of egotism; my disposition is always to be telling of my dislike and my scorn.' What a fine, fresh, fruitful, progressive, and peaceful world we should ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... outline of the salient points of what I consider to be a rational, though, it may be, incomplete, theory of the geyser action I saw in the Yellowstone Park, I shall now add a concluding word on the probable mode of action of the so-called 'earth-sod emetic' that my daughter describes as having been given to the 'Stroker' geyser in Iceland ...
— A Girl's Ride in Iceland • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... bullet projector in an outer pouch of the suit where I could instantly reach it. This was more rational; we had a fighting chance now. The fear which had swept me ...
— Brigands of the Moon • Ray Cummings
... had reason to expect such a declaration, yet she heard it with unaffected concern, and looking at him with the utmost gentleness, said "Mr Arnott, your regard does me honour, and, were it somewhat more rational, would give me pleasure; take, then, from it what is more than I wish or merit, and, while you preserve the rest, be assured ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... obsolete theology. Evil, we are told, "is good in another way we are not skilled in."[32] So says the author of "Representative Men." "Evil," according to old philosophers, "is good in the making; that pure malignity can exist is the extreme proposition of unbelief. It is not to be entertained by a rational agent. It is Atheism; it is the last profanation." "The divine effort is never relaxed; the carrion in the sun will convert itself into grass and flowers; and man, though in brothels, or jails, or on gibbets, is on his way to all ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... utterly unacquainted with the art of writing, they have no records or monuments from which to elucidate this inquiry, and their traditionary accounts are too crude and imperfect to afford any degree of rational information on the subject. The Chilese call their first progenitors Pegni Epatum, signifying the brothers named Epatum. They call them likewise glyce, or primitive men; and in their assemblies invoke their ancestors and deities in a loud voice, crying Pom, pam, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr
... incompatible with the doctrines of the Christian Religion; and if I am not mistaken, your Lordship, on a late occasion, after having perused a work attempting to establish such principles, did incline, by "rational doubts," to suspect that these opinions were "directed ...
— A Letter to the Right Honorable the Lord Chancellor, on the Nature and Interpretation of Unsoundness of Mind, and Imbecility of Intellect • John Haslam
... exceedingly headstrong and determined, never attending to remonstrances on account of danger; one instance of which was in the attack of the fortresses called the Rocks of the Marquis, which he forced us to climb, contrary to all our opinions, where courage, counsel, or wisdom, could give no rational hope of success. Another instance was in his obstinacy respecting the expedition against De Oli; in which I repeatedly urged him to go by way of the mountains, whereas he obstinately persisted in going by the coast. Had he taken my advice, he would have found towns the whole way. Where we had to ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. IV. • Robert Kerr
... an atrocious slander. But Mr. Mill can meet such ethical problems only by reverting to that general principle of Kant, which he elsewhere repudiates: "So act that the rule on which thou actest would admit of being adopted as a law for all rational beings." Mr. Mill says of such instances, "The action is of a class which, if practised generally, would be generally injurious, and this is the ground of the obligation to abstain from it." But under the rule ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... immortality of the soul had not a rational leg to stand on. The anima, or spirit, being merely the product of certain elements combined in life, was wiped out when those elements dissolved their union in death. It was the flame of a candle blown out. Yet with what unbelievable persistence ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... light and power of Christianity shall increase, the law of nations will undergo still further improvements. And it is to be hoped, that, as one of these improvements, the practice of settling national disputes by war will be abolished, and the more rational and humane course be adopted, of referring difficulties which the parties are incapable of adjusting, to some ...
— The Government Class Book • Andrew W. Young
... former worshipped at the holy sepulchre, the latter might pray and preach in the mosque of the temple, [90] from whence the prophet undertook his nocturnal journey to heaven. The clergy deplored this scandalous toleration; and the weaker Moslems were gradually expelled; but every rational object of the crusades was accomplished without bloodshed; the churches were restored, the monasteries were replenished; and, in the space of fifteen years, the Latins of Jerusalem exceeded the number of six thousand. This peace and prosperity, for which they were ungrateful ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... from experimental to deductive. But the deductions which Bacon abolished were from premises hastily snatched up, or arbitrarily assumed. The principles were neither established by legitimate canons of experimental inquiry, nor the results tested by that indispensable element of a rational Deductive Method, verification by specific experience. Between the primitive method of Deduction and that which I have attempted to characterize, there is all the difference which exists between the Aristotelian physics and the Newtonian theory ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... extreme, which would "upset society." And here be it noted that, with all our inordinate national or international Anglo-Saxon sense of superiority to everybody and everything foreign, we are in the main thing—that is, the truly rational enjoyment of life and the art of living—utterly inferior to the German and Latin races. We are for the most part either too good or too bad—totally abstemious or raving drunk—always in a hurry after excitement or in a worry over our ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... she stands to the other sex. Thus she can guard her own health, and preserve her offspring from degeneracy. It is only by enlightenment, and the extension of knowledge on the topics relating to soundness of body and mind, that we can found rational hopes of a permanent and wide-spread improvement ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... in an outer pouch of the suit where I could instantly reach it. This was more rational: we had a fighting chance now. The fear which had swept me so suddenly began to recede. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various
... longer? "Maybe at the moment the Lord will put it into our heads." This is very old-fashioned phraseology, and a week before, most likely, I should have smiled (though always with kindness) at Dr. Moncrieff's credulity; but there was a great comfort, whether rational or otherwise I cannot say, in the mere ...
— The Open Door, and the Portrait. - Stories of the Seen and the Unseen. • Margaret O. (Wilson) Oliphant
... Schede, Calot, Lorenz, and Hoffa for the rational treatment which seeks to reduce ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... once more from his chair and made a few steps in the room, with downcast eyes and folded arms. Methodical and rational to the end, he collected his thoughts for the last time and reviewed the result of his melancholy reflexions, forcing himself to state the facts with the utmost plainness and conciseness, as though he were summing ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... mind,—a dodge in question-begging that is one of the most ingenious ever devised; a piece of masculine logic that puts to shame all historic examples of womanly fallacy and sophistry. It seems to me that the question is easily settled on this wise: it is impossible for a rational mind to deny that the best work done in the arts by women is of better quality than the average work done by men. This lets the cat's head out of the bag, and her whole ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... real charm. The long conversation by the watch-fire in the wood, where Germain tries to break off his suit to the widow already and transfer himself to Marie, with Marie's cool and (for she has loved him already) self-denying refusal on the most atrociously rational and business-like principles, is first-rate. It may rank, with the above-mentioned discussion about Consuelo's beauty between herself and her lover, as one of the best examples of George ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... this, the contents of any special theology commend themselves to a comparatively few minds. And such hold as they have over these minds is for the most part traditionary and authoritative, not rational or intelligent. There can be no vital experience of theological definitions, and no verification of them, except in the few minds who have really examined them, and brought them into the light of their own intelligence. This must always be the work of a ...
— Religion and Theology: A Sermon for the Times • John Tulloch
... which forgets outside duties in the luxury of devout contemplation; and though either of these is to be immeasurably preferred to indifference, they both are as immeasurably inferior to that piety, equally fervent and rational, which neglects neither man for God, nor God for man, and which remains mindful of all human and earthly relations, fitnesses, and duties, while at the same time it retains its hold of faith, hope, and habitual communion, on ...
— A Manual of Moral Philosophy • Andrew Preston Peabody
... regard to this: "I hope that no gentleman will think that a State can be called at the bar of the Federal court. Is there no such case at present? Are there not many cases, in which the Legislature of Virginia is a party, and yet the State is not sued? Is it rational to suppose that the sovereign power shall be dragged ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... medicine, the medicine of observation, denying prodigies, seeking natural causes for diseases, and already setting up rational therapeutics. There are seventy-two works called "Hippocratical," which belong to his school; ...
— Initiation into Literature • Emile Faguet
... weak a power may be, rational use will make it stronger. No matter how awkward your movements may be, how obtuse your senses, or how crude your thought, or how unregulated your desires, you may by patient discipline acquire, slowly indeed but with ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden
... few of those, who as they said were formerly on the side of the Horseherd, now fully agree with me, that the world is not irrational. Here is the dividing line between two systems of philosophy. Whoever thinks that an irrational world becomes rational by the survival of the fittest, etc., stands on one side; I stand on the other, and hold with the Greek thinkers, who accept the world as the expression of the Logos, or of a reasonable thought ...
— The Silesian Horseherd - Questions of the Hour • Friedrich Max Mueller
... sentiment overpowers the voice of humanity, and the love of dogs and cats supersedes that of one's neighbour, the progress of experimental physiology and pathology will, indubitably, in course of time, place medicine and hygiene upon a rational basis. ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... 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 ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... and describes visits of the child to their home, where, in a little Lord Fauntleroy suit, he would stand up before them all and sing a whole recital of little songs, to the delight of all his relatives. The singer's progress, from the musical child on and up to that of an operatic artist, has been rational and healthy, with nothing hectic or overwrought about it; a constant, gradual ascent of the mountain. And while an enviable vantage ground has been reached, such an artist must feel there are yet other heights to conquer. ...
— Vocal Mastery - Talks with Master Singers and Teachers • Harriette Brower
... that man in France, whom he conceived to be the best judge, and in return received the most mortifying remarks. The great philosopher exclaimed in despair, "I see my own age is not ripe enough to understand my work; however, it shall be published!" When KEPLER published the first rational work on comets, it was condemned, even by the learned, as a wild dream. COPERNICUS so much dreaded the prejudice of mankind against his treatise on "The Revolutions of the Heavenly Bodies," that, by a species of continence ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... man so hot in my life. I tried to calm him, that we might come to something rational; but he got hotter and hotter, and ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... comfortable after this conversation. I had tried to be fair to the young man both in word and thought, but I could not relish the idea of my daughter falling in love with him, which looked likely enough, before I knew more about him, and found that more good and hope-giving. There was but one rational thing left to do, and that was to cast my care on him that careth for us—on the Father who loved my child more than even I could love her—and loved the young man too, and regarded my anxiety, and would take its cause upon himself. After I had lifted ...
— The Seaboard Parish Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... continuous applause, having spoken for two hours and three quarters. The Public at once declared with unanimity so remarkable that nothing would well surpass it That patriotic self-sacrifice was a Priceless National Asset: No rational person, they said, could fail to be deeply impressed by the charms Of that truly august conception, a Nation in Arms: To become expert in the use of strictly defensive weapons, spear or sword, Lee-Metford, torpedo, ...
— The Casual Ward - academic and other oddments • A. D. Godley
... Jesus-Christ, is now placed in the centre of figures representing the four ages of life and striking the quarters of hours; the idea of assigning this place to the image of death is assuredly a more rational and finer one than that which prevailed in the old distribution of the figures. Childhood strikes the first quarter; Youth the second; Manhood the third, and Old Age the last; the first stroke of each quarter ...
— Historical Sketch of the Cathedral of Strasburg • Anonymous
... rank were interested, and the movement affected the whole life of the people. A new interest was taken in education, in art, in religion, and in social reform. Old methods of instruction were superseded by more rational ones. Hundreds of new schools were established for the benefit of the middle classes. The whole tendency of the New Learning was toward a higher ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: History • Ontario Ministry of Education
... money necessary for his education, he rose to a position of some influence. He was one of the first to propose that museums and public galleries should be opened on Sundays, for he declared that most of the intemperance and vice was owing to the want of wholesome and rational recreation. He insisted that it was necessary to create a moral, sober, and thinking working-class in order to enable them to carry through the reforms for which they were struggling. Disgust with the violent methods of many of his associates caused him ...
— Queen Victoria • E. Gordon Browne
... especially gay songs; they invariably evoke a vaporous melancholy. Card-playing Euphemia objects to because her uncle, the dean, is prominent in connection with some ridiculous association for the suppression of gambling; and in what are called "games" no rational creature esteeming himself an immortal soul would participate. In this difficulty it was that Euphemia—decided, I fancy, by the possession of certain really very becoming aprons—took up ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... in a military sense proved to be Germany, because of the strength of the industries and because of their modern and rational construction as against the archaic construction of the German State. France, with its undeveloped state of capitalism, proved to be far behind Germany, and even such a powerful colonial power as Great Britain, owing to the conservative ...
— From October to Brest-Litovsk • Leon Trotzky
... at her, paralyzed with the certainty that no mortal aid could save her from this dire extremity, there came an unexpected diversion. Old Lady Green spoke out clearly and decidedly from her corner, in so rational a voice that it seemed like ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown
... sultan of Moco-moco, and apparently written about fifty years ago, was communicated to me by Mr. Alexander Dalrymple, and though it is in part a repetition I esteem it too curious to hesitate about inserting it. The style is much more rational than that of the foregoing. "Praised be Almighty God! Sultan Gagar Alum the great and noble King, whose extensive power reacheth unto the limits of the wide ocean; unto whom God grants whatever he desires, ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... no more. He, for his part, was amazed at her being so little disturbed, so rational. He had expected pretty little flirting ways, refusals which meant yes, a whole coquettish comedy of love chequered by prawn-fishing in the splashing water. And it was all over; he was pledged, married with twenty words. They had ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... that this cultivating of the feelings be conducted along rational lines, lest it run not to faith but to fanaticism. There is a wide difference between emotion designed for display or for momentary effect, and that which arises from strong inner conviction and sympathetic interest in others. Spurious, unnatural feeling will invariably ...
— Talks on Talking • Grenville Kleiser
... more privileges. They are more independent—more like men; and consequently they find another kind of enjoyment in camp than that of the cadet. It is a general, a proper, a rational sort of pleasure such as one would enjoy at home among relatives or friends, and hence the similarity between first-class ...
— Henry Ossian Flipper, The Colored Cadet at West Point • Henry Ossian Flipper
... brief keeping. No, she would never accept his terms and face 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 remain, and ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... Polycarp is represented as sending several of the Ignatian Epistles to the Philippians along with his own letter. This theory is at all events intelligible; and, so far as I can see, it is the only rational theory ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot
... 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 Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... treasonable practices, and the commission, whether before or after the Act, of crimes of intimidation, or incitement thereto." The conflict over the latter bill, which was first introduced, made the House of Commons more like a bear-garden than a place of rational deliberation and debate. Even Mr. Bright and Mr. Gladstone became exasperated, and charged back upon their assailants with an energy and violence quite unwonted. Mr. Gladstone's speech in particular aroused the House, angered the Irish members, ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, February, 1886. - The Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 2, February, 1886. • Various
... parlance, so far pretty. I cannot help the common course of things; and however hackneyed be the thought, however common-place the phrase, it is true, nevertheless, that beauty, singular beauty, would be the first idea of any rational creature, who caught but a glimpse of Emily Warren; and I should account it little wonder if, upon a calmer gaze, that beauty were found to have its deepest, clearest fountain in those large dark eyes ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... highly privileged) as "shirking." With every retirement from politics increased power passes to those who remain. Shall they protest? Shall they, also, who have retired? Who else is to protest? The complaint of "incivism" would be more rational if there were some one by whom it could reasonably ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... led to regard the basis of fire or flame as the fundamental principle of all things, both spiritual and material. Diog'enes, the Cretan, was led to regard the universe as issuing from an intelligent principle—a rational as well as sensitive soul—but without recognizing any distinction between mind and matter; while Anaximan'der conceived the primitive state of the universe to have been a vast chaos or infinity, containing the elements from which the ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... bidden him goodnight, the aunt instantly assumed a caressing confidence towards Ethel, particularly comfortable to one consciously backward and awkward, and making her feel as intimate as if the whole space of her rational life had not ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... germination. Already a delicate root had penetrated the soil, and was extracting food therefrom. Oh! why did he not instantly pluck it out, when the hand of an infant would have sufficed in strength for the task? Why did he let it remain, shielding it from the cold winds of rational truth and the hot sun of good affections, until it could live, sustained by its own organs of appropriation and nutrition? Why did he let it remain until its lusty growth gave sad promise of an evil ...
— True Riches - Or, Wealth Without Wings • T.S. Arthur
... Its prospectus is before me in his handwriting, but it bears upon itself sufficiently the character of his hand and mind. The paper would be kept free, it said, from personal influence or party bias; and would be devoted to the advocacy of all rational and honest means by which wrong might be redressed, just rights maintained, and the happiness and welfare ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... Yet, after all, she did not think it probable. She said all she consistently could say to soothe her child, without absolutely declaring that she believed her fears to be groundless. That she dared not utter. She finished by a very common and rational argument, which, by the way, has ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... cave, as the leader of an army at Dupree's Drift, and at the kraal we had left as the savage with all self-control flung to the winds. I was to see this amazing man in a further part. For he now became a friendly and rational companion. He kept his horse at an easy walk, and talked to me as if we were two friends out for a trip together. Perhaps he had talked thus to Arcoll, the half-caste who ...
— Prester John • John Buchan
... Light. No one, who has not been stultified by theological nebulosities, ought to fail to know, as we knew when we first began to go to school, that a blind man cannot see anything at all. Therefore it is an insult to the understanding, and paltering with all the rational inductions of modern science, for an educated writer, stone blind, to say a word ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 7, May 14, 1870 • Various
... she took out of the envelope a letter of two pages. She read it trembling. It declined, indeed, to publish that tale, for business reasons, but it discussed its merits and demerits so courteously, so considerately, in a spirit so rational, with a discrimination so enlightened, that this very refusal cheered the author better than a vulgarly expressed acceptance would have done. It was added, that a work in three volumes would meet ...
— Charlotte Bronte's Notes on the pseudonyms used • Charlotte Bronte
... but her case was of so long standing that but little hope was entertained of her entire recovery. Still every thing was done for her that could be done, and after a time she became far less boisterous than formerly, and sometimes appeared perfectly rational for days. She still retained her taste for literature, and nothing but George's firmness and decision prevented her from sending off the manuscript of her grammar, which was now finished. It was in vain that he told her she was not now obliged to write ...
— The English Orphans • Mary Jane Holmes
... what extent does unconsciousness rather than consciousness determine the behavior of a person? Give an illustration where the behavior of a person was inconsistent with his rational determination. ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... to urge upon rational beings the use of a shuttlecock as a duty; but this is surely better than that one's health should become a thing as perishable, and fly away as easily. There is no danger that our educational systems will soon grow too careless of intellect and too careful of health. Reforms, whether in physiology ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... thus excites them to action. A better illustration, because it displays sympathy, is when the skin, disabled by cold, cannot act, and its duties are largely performed by the kidneys. Though reflex action is easily traced in the lower organic processes, some writers have placed it on a level with rational deliberation. Undoubtedly, all animals having perception have also what perception implies—consciousness—and this indicates the possession, in some degree, of reason. Compound reflex action extends into the domain of thought. Simple reflex action, or instinct, answers to the animal faculties, ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... so many people appeared contemptible and insignificant creatures, and he so longed to find in someone the living ideal of that perfection toward which he strove, that he readily believed that in Speranski he had found this ideal of a perfectly rational and virtuous man. Had Speranski sprung from the same class as himself and possessed the same breeding and traditions, Bolkonski would soon have discovered his weak, human, unheroic sides; but as it was, Speranski's strange and logical turn of mind inspired him with respect ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... either, I can assure you; and I am not a little glad, my much honoured Colonel Butler, that we agree so well in our opinions. A half dozen good friends at most, 55 at a small round table, a glass of genuine Tokay, open hearts, and a rational conversation—that's ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... 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 ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... these anomalous relations toward each other. And yet, at every fresh instance which comes before us, we persist in being astonished to find that the man and the woman have not chosen each other on rational and producible grounds! We expect human passion to act on logical principles; and human fallibility—with love for its guide—to be above all danger of making a mistake! Ask the wisest among Anne Silvester's sex what they saw to rationally justify them in choosing the men ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... washing day; The decadents decay; the pedants pall; And H. G. Wells has found that children play, And Bernard Shaw discovered that they squall; Rationalists are growing rational— And through thick woods one finds a stream astray, So secret that the very sky seems small— I think I will not ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... Ernest, twelve years of age, well-informed and rational, but somewhat selfish and indolent. In the eighth, myself, an anxious father, charged with the important duty of guiding the vessel to save my dear family. Each of us had some useful tools beside us; each held an oar, and had a swimming apparatus at hand, in case we ...
— The Swiss Family Robinson; or Adventures in a Desert Island • Johann David Wyss
... her face, after some little while I brought her to her senses. The flaring of the candle reminded me that the shop door was open. I went and made it fast, and then spoke to her. It was a long while before I could obtain any rational answer. She continued to groan and cry at intervals, "Don't leave me, Jack, don't leave me." At last she fell into a sort of slumber from exhaustion, and in this state she remained for more than an hour. One thing was evident to me, which was, that the party, whoever ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... crime may be connected and explained, we have a clew to the criminal. The instances mentioned,—the motherly care of house and family, frugality, miserliness, hardness to servants, cruelty to aged parents,—seem rare and not altogether rational, yet they occur frequently and give the right clew to the criminal. There are still other similar combinations. Everybody knows feminine love for trials at court, for the daily paper's reports of them, and for public executions. While the last were still common in Austria, newspapers ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... only possible explanation of so extraordinary a circumstance is that of a mendacious intelligence of superhuman power carefully disposing all the observable facts of his creation in such a way as to compel his rational creatures, by the best and most impartial use of their rational faculties, to conclude that the theory of evolution is as certainly true as the theory of special creation ...
— The Scientific Evidences of Organic Evolution • George John Romanes
... sort. Children are not consenting to their relation; but their relation, without their actual consent, binds them to its duties,—or rather it implies their consent, because the presumed consent of every rational creature is in unison with the predisposed order of things. Men come in that manner into a community with the social state of their parents, endowed with all the benefits, loaded with all the duties of their situation. If the social ties and ligaments, spun out of those physical relations ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... my 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
... my argument, that the Irish Parliament always acts absolutely within the limits or the letter of the constitution, though to make this assumption is to substitute unreasonable hopes for rational expectations. What Englishmen should note, because they do not yet understand it, is that within the limits of the constitution the Irish Cabinet and the Irish Parliament possess and must possess ...
— A Leap in the Dark - A Criticism of the Principles of Home Rule as Illustrated by the - Bill of 1893 • A.V. Dicey
... addressing the emperor as "Sire et mon frere." The queen entirely approved the visit, and Baron Stockmar predicted much advantage from it, "inasmuch," he said, "as the good or evil destiny of the present time will directly and chiefly depend upon a rational, honorable, and resolute alliance ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... of a rational, practical formula for computing the quantity of cement required for a given mixture will now be given, based upon the ...
— Concrete Construction - Methods and Costs • Halbert P. Gillette
... have steered clear of them and gone home with Randolph. Well, I'll have one good day; there isn't a house within four miles of the point where I am going, and fishes can't preach. I will live in rest for one morning. We will have some good rational enjoyment all by ourselves, won't we, Tiger? And carry home a string of trout for Aunt Mattie, to pay her for looking so ...
— Sunshine Factory • Pansy
... reason for sarcasm. It would be a most rational proceeding. I like her very much; but to marry her (supposing she would have me) without money would he a gross absurdity, simply spoiling my career, and leading to ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... almost more than its original freshness of life. With such scenes touching even his own home, Scott must have been constantly taught to balance in his own mind, the more romantic, against the more sober and rational considerations, which had so recently divided house against house, even in the same family and clan. That the stern Calvinistic lawyer should have retained so much of his grandfather Beardie's respect for the adherents of the exiled house of Stuart, must in itself have struck the boy as ...
— Sir Walter Scott - (English Men of Letters Series) • Richard H. Hutton
... crude and immoral maxims mixed up with noble precepts in Revelation; to those who recognised the impossibility of accepting the varying voices of Intuition as a moral guide; to all those the theory that Morality was based on Utility, came as a welcome and rational relief. It promised a scientific certitude to moral precepts; it left the intellect free to inquire and to challenge; it threw man back on grounds which were found in this world alone, and could be ...
— The Basis of Morality • Annie Besant
... good woman, and capable of strong attachments, most correct in her conduct, strict in her notions of decorum, and with manners that were held a standard of good-breeding. She had a cultivated mind, and was, generally speaking, rational and consistent; but she had prejudices on the side of ancestry; she had a value for rank and consequence, which blinded her a little to the faults of those who possessed them. Herself the widow of ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... him of what petty and what ignoble witticisms that mud was made up. At last he begins in real earnest. "Balaustion, he understands, condemns comedy both in theory and in practice, from the calm and rational heights to which she, with her tragic friend, has attained. Here are his arguments in ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... Stravinsky, Shostakovich, Cage, Adams, and certainly none of a Schoenberg, in Liszt's music. His music has an ideological "ceiling," and that ceiling is "beauty." It never goes beyond that. And perhaps it was never as "beautiful" as the music of Mozart, Bach or Beethoven, nor quite as rational (Are all the emotions in Liszt's music truly "controlled?"). But it certainly was original and instructive, and it certainly ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated
... post-traumatic edemas which may or may not cause lameness. At any rate, it is essential to take into account all determinate conditions that may assist in the prognosis of any given case, for the purpose of being able to outline rational remedial measures. To be able to distinguish between the generalization of a septic infection in its incipiency, and a more or less benign edema, is largely possible by digital manipulation alone. An extremity may be greatly swollen because of the existence of chronic lymphangitis, ...
— Lameness of the Horse - Veterinary Practitioners' Series, No. 1 • John Victor Lacroix
... follow in an acute involvement, nor can he predict that the case will or will not become chronic. Experience has proved that complete or partial recovery may result, or again, that no change may occur in any given case, and that in some instances even where rational treatment is early administered, a decided aggravation of the condition ...
— Lameness of the Horse - Veterinary Practitioners' Series, No. 1 • John Victor Lacroix
... Howson (Life and Letters of S. Paul, ii. 491), to eject the words "at Ephesus" from the text of Ephes. i. 1, and actually to substitute in their room the words "in Laodicea,"—is plainly abhorrent to every principle of rational criticism. The remarks of C. and H. on this subject (pp. 486 ff) have been faithfully met and sufficiently disposed of by Dean Alford (vol. iii. Prolegg. pp. 13-8); who infers, "in accordance ...
— The Last Twelve Verses of the Gospel According to S. Mark • John Burgon
... turning to those who deny that they are sinners, he exclaims, and if we say that we have no sin, and therefore do not need this cleansing, and can do without this atonement, then we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. How much more rational is such an interpretation than the exposition which makes one verse contradict the other, and represents the apostle as first assuring us that we may be cleansed from all sin, and then declaring in effect. "But be sure to remember that this cleansing is never really affected, and you are never ...
— The Theology of Holiness • Dougan Clark
... him some of the things I found. Here is a definition of God which did not help me very much." He picked up one of the slips of paper and read: "'God is the integrated harmony of all potentialities of good in every actual and possible rational agent.' What do you ...
— Dorian • Nephi Anderson
... touched with some strain of a better spirit than belongs to these giddy-paced timesreveres his elders, and has a pretty notion of the classicsand, as such a youth must have a natural contempt for the people about Fairport, I wish to show him some rational as well as worshipful society.I am, Dear Sir Arthur, etc. ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... ten of the more substantial and rational inhabitants traversed in a body, slowly and silently, the agitated throng; they seemed overwhelmed with amazement and distress at the agitation and excitement they witnessed everywhere, and as each new instance of the popular frenzy appeared, they exchanged glances of wonder and apprehension. ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... artistic method of his thought, and lay stress on its content only. He has a right to a place amongst philosophers, as Plato has to a place amongst poets. There is such deliberate earnestness and systematic consistency in his teaching, that Hegel can scarcely be said to have maintained that "The Rational is the Real" with greater intellectual tenacity, than Browning held to his view of life. He sought, in fact, to establish an Idealism; and that Idealism, like Kant's and Fichte's, has its last ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones
... Each seeming want compensated of course, Here with degrees of swiftness, there of force; All in exact proportion to the state; Nothing to add, and nothing to abate. Each beast, each insect, happy in its own: 185 Is Heav'n unkind to Man, and Man alone? Shall he alone, whom rational we call, Be pleas'd with nothing, if ...
— The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems • Alexander Pope
... Sadly against her will she gave way. One morning in early March, she absented herself from her place in the class-room without even taking leave of her beloved schoolgirls, whom she had tried so hard unobtrusively to train up towards a rational understanding of the universe around them, and sat down to write a final letter of farewell to poor straight-laced kind-hearted Miss Smith-Waters. She sat down to it with a sigh; for Miss Smith-Waters, though her outlook upon the cosmos was through one narrow chink, was a good soul up to her ...
— The Woman Who Did • Grant Allen
... of Elders, the Council of the Five Hundred, the Directory, and the Constitution of the year III., fell together, and from the ruins of the bloody and ferocious democratic republic arose the moderate, rational republic of the year 1798. At its head were the three consuls, Bonaparte, ...
— Queen Hortense - A Life Picture of the Napoleonic Era • L. Muhlbach
... little while they had now wherewith to live; and if it seem to my reader that the horizon of hope was narrowing around them, it does not follow that it must have seemed so to them. For what is the extent of our merely rational horizon at any time? But for faith and imagination it would be a narrow one indeed! Even what we call experience is but a stupid kind of faith. It is a trusting in impetus instead of in love. And those days were fashioning an ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... Barrack Room Ballants, which are not of so noble a strain as some of mine in the Gaelic, but I could set some of them to the pipes if this rencounter goes as it's to be desired. Let's first, as I understand you to move, do each other this rational courtesys; and if either will survive, we may grow better acquaint. For your tastes for what's martial and ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the latter, it rushes from the black box into the white one without hesitation. So much evidence the discrimination tests furnish of forms of behavior which in our fellow-men we should interpret as rational. ...
— The Dancing Mouse - A Study in Animal Behavior • Robert M. Yerkes
... while they have been amused with the shadow of liberty, they have been cruelly despoiled of the substance. Even on the establishment of the present constitution, the one which bore the nearest resemblance to a rational system, the freedom of election, which had been frequently proclaimed as the very corner-stone of liberty, was shamefully violated by the legislative body, who, in their eagerness to perpetuate their own power, did not ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... can pull about and draw out according to their sweet will. When in opera the recitative commences, it means to them, "The Lord be praised, here is an end to that cursed tempo, which off and on compels us to a kind of rational rendering; we can now float about in all directions, dwell on any note we like until the prompter has supplied us with the next phrase; the conductor has now no power over us, and we can take revenge for his pretensions by commanding him to give us the beat when it suits us," etc. Although ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 1 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... 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 ...
— The World's Great Men of Music - Story-Lives of Master Musicians • Harriette Brower
... poetical idea, Miss Mordaunt, and founded on evidence quite as rational as other assertions of the metamorphosis of one creature into another. Perhaps you can do what the philosophers cannot,—tell me how you learned a new idea ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... do not know that it is; and I wish to call your attention to the truth that the obligation to refrain from evil rests upon every rational human being in a Christian land, for God has commanded all men to love and obey him; also, to the fact that the difference between the Christian and the sinner is that one acknowledges the obligation, while the other denies it; and that the denial does not remove the obligation. God has not invited ...
— Choice Readings for the Home Circle • Anonymous
... subsist and even to earn somewhat, but only just enough to suffice for the declaration of a modest dividend. That is why Italian navigation companies levy such excessive rates of freight, why their service is not organized in accordance with rational and latter day standards, why they take no thought of winning foreign markets or of national expansion.[9] They have no means of consigning merchandise at the domicile, so that the consignees are put to enormous ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... 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 best success at ...
— The New McGuffey Fourth Reader • William H. McGuffey
... Italian states, depicted by Machiavel; perpetually changing postures and connexions; bitter foes to-day, sugared darlings to-morrow; kissing and scratching in a breath;—but the wars of whist were comparable to the long, steady, deep-rooted, rational, antipathies of the great ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... attitude towards the Missing Link was hostile. It was felt that here was a dangerous brute at large. Several armed themselves with stones and sticks. Inside Professor Thunder was still raving to drown Madame's rational arguments. Twice he burst into the open with fresh invectives for Nickie, and some trifling piece of dress or property to hurl at him; but Madame Marve and the Living Skeleton hung on his coat-tails ...
— The Missing Link • Edward Dyson
... wish a definition of the word "man" take it from this text teaching that he is a rational being, with a heart given to imagination. But what does he imagine? Moses answers, "Evil"; that is, evil against God or God's Law, and against his fellow man. Thus holy Scriptures ascribe to man a reason that is not idle but always imagines ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... cried Honora, radiantly, 'you and I will go too! You shall come with me to Woolstone-lane, and Robin shall be with us every day; and we will try and make this silly Lucy into a rational being.' ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Lord Henry. "They are the last refuge of the complex. But I don't like scenes, except on the stage. What absurd fellows you are, both of you! I wonder who it was defined man as a rational animal. It was the most premature definition ever given. Man is many things, but he is not rational. I am glad he is not, after all: though I wish you chaps would not squabble over the picture. You had much better let me have it, Basil. This silly ...
— The Picture of Dorian Gray • Oscar Wilde
... removal. Parties indeed fermented there as before; but, after the withdrawal of the extraordinary man who had wellnigh changed the destinies of the world, the patriot party was not of much more importance in Carthage than in Aetolia or Achaia. The most rational of the various ideas which then agitated the unhappy city was beyond doubt that of attaching themselves to Massinissa and of converting him from the oppressor into the protector of the Phoenicians. But neither the national section of the patriots ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... her wealth did pass, Like simple merchants' goods, Leander was; For in that sea she naked figur'd him; Her diving needle taught him how to swim, And to each thread did such resemblance give, For joy to be so like him it did live: Things senseless live by art, and rational die By rude contempt of art and industry. Scarce could she work, but, in her strength of thought, She fear'd she prick'd Leander as she wrought, And oft would shriek so, that her guardian, frighted, Would staring haste, as with some mischief cited: They double life that dead things' grief ...
— Hero and Leander and Other Poems • Christopher Marlowe and George Chapman
... for Logical Thought. Logical thought separates the rational from the irrational. Its use avoids the wastefulness of the trial-and-error method. By its insistent employment, dormant powers of reasoning are awakened, and the danger that attends instinctive, spontaneous, impulsive, or emotional acceptance ...
— Sound Military Decision • U.s. Naval War College
... you told me you were going to get me a hare,' observed Mrs. Jog; adding, 'I'm sure shooting is a much more rational amusement than tearing your clothes going after the hounds,' eyeing the much ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... grammar was the great subject of the seven during all the early Middle Ages, dialectic later came to take its place. After the rise of the universities and the organization of schools of theology, with theology more of a rational science and less a matter of dogma, dialectic came to hold first place in importance as a preparation for the disputations of the later Middle Ages. Theological questions formed the practical exercises, and the schools doing most in dialectic attracted ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... instance of what they called "third personism" occur among THEIR OWN circle, it was always kept dark—not a hint of what was going on being allowed to transpire, and even the wronged husband holding himself ready, should he meet with, or hear of, the "third person," to quote, in a mild and rational manner, the proverb, "Whom concerns it that a friend should consort with friend?" In addition, I may say that, like most of the female world of St. Petersburg, the ladies of N. were pre-eminently careful and refined in their choice of words and phrases. ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... rational conclusion, therefore, at which we can arrive in regard to these early oil operations is, that they are due, not to the Indians or French or early white settlers, but to some primitive dwellers on the soil, who have long since passed away, leaving no written ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... feet on the ground. He goes forward step by step. He regards "impossible" as a description for that which we have not at the moment the knowledge to achieve. He knows that as we amass knowledge we build the power to overcome the impossible. That is the rational way of doing the "impossible." The irrational way is to make the attempt without the toil of accumulating knowledge. Mr. Edison is only approaching the height of his power. He is the man who is going ...
— My Life and Work • Henry Ford
... main lines in the body of a ship very finely, and which do please me mightily, and so am resolved to study hard, and learn of him to understand a body, and I find him a very pretty fellow in it, and rational, but a little conceited, but that's no matter to me. At noon, by my Lady Batten's desire, I went over the water to Mr. Castle's, who brings his wife home to his own house to-day, where I found a great many good old women, and my Lady, Sir W. Batten, and Sir J. ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... have for the first time fully developed their structure (that of the Medusae), and laid the foundation of a rational theory for their classification. In your second paper, on the anatomy of Salpa and Pyrosoma, the phenomena have received the most ingenious and elaborate elucidations, and have given rise to a process of reasoning, the results of which ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell
... 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 out, like ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, March 28, 1891 • Various
... 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
... man can go and spend his nights in a tavern!—oh, yes, Mr. Caudle; I daresay you DO go for rational conversation. I should like to know how many of you would care for what you call rational conversation, if you had it without your filthy brandy-and- water; yes, and your more filthy tobacco-smoke. ...
— Mrs. Caudle's Curtain Lectures • Douglas Jerrold
... After the operation no further fits occurred, and eight days later he was conscious, but was excitable and talked at random. On the twentieth day he arrived at the Base after 30 hours' railway journey (623 miles). He was then quite rational, but unable to make any demands on his memory and very sensitive to noise; at times he wandered in the evenings and his temperature rose as high as 100 deg.. The wound was open and granulating, the ...
— Surgical Experiences in South Africa, 1899-1900 • George Henry Makins
... Rowland stayed there alone. He watched for seven long hours, and his vigil was forever memorable. The most rational of men was for an hour the most passionate. He reviled himself with transcendent bitterness, he accused himself of cruelty and injustice, he would have lain down there in Roderick's place to unsay the words that had yesterday driven him forth on his lonely ramble. ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... things which exist because we require them, which we know because we employ them, these are the type of all great works of art. And from the selfsame craving which insists that these should be shapely as well as handy, pleasant to the eye as well as rational; through the selfsame processes of seeing and remembering and altering their shapes—according to the same aesthetic laws of line and curve, of surface and projection, of spring and restraint, of clearness and compensation; and for ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... hardly answer. The Lieutenant is not severely wounded, and this morning appears to be perfectly rational. Yet he insists you committed the assault; even refers to you ...
— Molly McDonald - A Tale of the Old Frontier • Randall Parrish
... christened with blood, it has been stained and mellowed by handling, it has been rounded and dented to the softened contours that we associate with life; it has been salted, maybe, in a brine of tears. But the thing that is merely proposed, the thing that is merely suggested, however rational, however necessary, seems strange and inhuman in its clear, hard, uncompromising lines, its unqualified ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... related to us a curious incident illustrating the instinct of the swinish quadruped; but which to his mind, as well as to ours, seemed more like a proof of a rational principle possessed by the animal. The incident he had himself been witness to, and in his own ...
— The Hunters' Feast - Conversations Around the Camp Fire • Mayne Reid
... I can talk about cork soles as well as anything else. Anything that may do material good to the world at large, or even to yourself privately, is a fit subject for conversation to rational people." ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... itself of this absurdity, and failed. Should he stick by the farthing; or should he call it a fifthing, a quint, or a semitenth? "There's the 'Fortnightly Review' comes out but once a month," he said to his friend Mr. Bonteen, "and I'm told that it does very well." Mr. Bonteen, who was a rational man, thought the "Review" would do better if it were called by a more rational name, and was very much in favour of "a quint." Mr. Gresham had expressed an opinion, somewhat off-hand, that English people ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... the bells on it. He's standing on a heap of shells and waving this rusty boat-hook around. Course, I expects when he sees Mr. Robert and realizes how he's been rescued he'll come out of his spell and begin to act rational once more. But it don't work out that way. When Mr. Robert calls out to him and he sees who it is, he keeps ...
— Torchy and Vee • Sewell Ford
... healthful employment of the mind, distracting one from too continual study of himself, and leading him to dwell rather upon the indigestions of the elements than his own. "Did the wind back round, or go about with the sun?" is a rational question that bears not remotely on the making of hay and the prosperity of crops. I have little doubt that the regulated observation of the vane in many different places, and the interchange of results by telegraph, would put the weather, as it ...
— My Garden Acquaintance • James Russell Lowell
... I do not know; but that it is a perfectly feasible and rational undertaking, under proper conditions, I as firmly believe as I do that I am alive," and he brought his fist down upon the desk by way of emphasis with a whack that made the various loose articles in the little office rattle. Even the bust upon the bracket moved about uneasily, whether by way of ...
— Doctor Jones' Picnic • S. E. Chapman
... seem self-evident to every thinking mind that idiomatic equivalence, not verbal identity, must form the basis of a good and faithful translation. When an English mother uses "you" to her child, she establishes thereby the only rational equivalent for the "du" used under similar circumstances ...
— Plays by August Strindberg, Second series • August Strindberg
... companion Augustus had been enjoying the rational amusement at Ranelagh, and were just leaving that celebrated place when they were arrested by a crowd at the entrance. That crowd was assembled round a pickpocket; and that pickpocket—O virtue, O wisdom, O Asinaeum!—was Peter MacGrawler! We have before said that Clifford ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... primitive, it is rational to infer that the most primitive penguin is farthest south. These are the two Antarcticists, the Emperor and the Adelie. The latter appears to be the more numerous and successful of the two, and for this reason we are inclined to search among the Emperors as being among the most primitive ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... teachings of the first lawgiver, not the last and greatest one. He had dealt punishment, not wrong, to Messala. By permission of the Lord, he had triumphed; and he derived faith from the circumstance—faith the source of all rational strength, especially strength ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... ours is, supposed to be growing in intelligence and simplicity, and yet voluntarily taking upon itself this artificial burden in an already overtaxed life! The angels in heaven must admire and wonder. The cynic wants to know what is gained for any rational being when a city-full of women undertake to make and receive formal visits with persons whom for the most part they do not wish to see. What is gained, he asks, by leaving cards with all these people and receiving their cards? ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... accompany." We walked along several corridors till we reached the room in which hung the parrot, I quite expected it to fly at me again and try to get rid of its miserable secret But no! It sat on its stick, perfectly quiet and rational. ...
— Crowded Out! and Other Sketches • Susie F. Harrison
... to the Greeks every noble discipline in literature, every radical principle of art; and every form of convenient beauty in our household furniture and daily occupations of life. We are unable, ourselves, to make rational use of half that we have received from them: and, of our own, we have nothing but discoveries in science, and fine mechanical adaptations of the discovered physical powers. On the other hand, the vice existing among certain classes, both of the rich and poor, in London, ...
— The Ethics of the Dust • John Ruskin
... favourite dictum of Grant Allen's,—is growing more and more to be the formula of the modern world; and, if a certain amount of self-sacrifice is of necessity included in a healthy self-development, the proportion is being reduced to a rational limit. One form of self-sacrifice, at all events, is no longer demanded of us—the wholesale sacrifice of our own opinions. The possibility that there may be two opinions or a dozen or a hundred on one matter, and that they may be all different, yet each one of them right in its proper application, ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... you is, see that you resort only to the sane, sound way of getting rid of the wholesome, rational dread of which I have been speaking. You can ignore it; and buy immunity at the price of leaving in full operation the causes of your dread—and that is stupid. There is only one wise thing to do, and that is, to ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... with a sardonic mildness, "that your games are already sufficiently interesting. Are you, may I ask, a professional acrobat on a tour, or a travelling advertisement of Sunny Jim? How and why do you display all this energy for clearing walls and climbing trees in our melancholy, but at least rational, suburbs?" ...
— Manalive • G. K. Chesterton
... rational, but there was another possibility. The other possible explanation was—considering everything—more probable. And it seemed to ...
— Operation Terror • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... Lakes, 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 ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... being made to establish a Unitarian church in New York city. She has not joined in the movement, but does not know but it may come to that. It is a critical moment in Miss Sedgwick's history, and it happened at this time she went to hear Dr. Mason's farewell sermon. "As usual," she says, "he gave the rational Christians an anathema. He said they had fellowship with the devil: no, he would not slander the devil, they were worse, etc." Very possibly this preaching had its proper effect upon many hearers, and they gave the "rational Christians" ...
— Daughters of the Puritans - A Group of Brief Biographies • Seth Curtis Beach
... Christ will be there. The earth-armies, the dwellers of the earth, Demon-possessed, will be blinded, deluded by the lie of the Anti-christ, and "The False Prophet." There is no madness or delusion into which the most rational of men will not ...
— The Mark of the Beast • Sidney Watson
... fairly. A few moments after it was dismissed she felt herself overshadowed by an awful presence, and, looking up, saw, as she had expected, the face of the master bending down over her. He proceeded to question her, but for some time she was too frightened to give a rational account of her acquirements, the best of which were certainly not of a kind to be appreciated by the master, even if she had understood them herself sufficiently to set them out before him. For, besides her aunt, who had taught her ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... the Arab, they say, consists in thinking how to reduce his work to a minimum. Now this being precisely my own ideal of life, and a most rational one, I would prefer to put it thus: that of many kinds of simplification they practise only one—omission, which does not always pay. They are imaginative, but incredibly uninventive. How different from the wily Hindu ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... Blackie was even kind enough to remark (more than once) while in the very act of writing the document above referred to, that he did not know my face. Indeed, I denied myself many opportunities; acting upon an extensive and highly rational system of truantry, which cost me a great deal of trouble to put in exercise—perhaps as much as would have taught me Greek—and sent me forth into the world and the profession of letters with the merest shadow of an education. But they say it is always a good ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... interchange between the two countries of slipshod and vulgar "journalese;" and as the picturesque reporter is a greater power in America than he is with us, we perhaps import more than we export of this particular commodity. But there can be no rational doubt, I think, that the English language has gained, and is gaining, enormously by its expansion over the American continent. The prime function of a language, after all, is to interpret the "form and pressure" of life—the experience, knowledge, ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... all things in a kind of dream, and then again nothing when he is awake?' Or where is the value of metaphysical pursuits more truly expressed than in the words,—'The greatest and noblest things have no outward image of themselves visible to man: therefore we should learn to give a rational account of them?' ...
— Statesman • Plato
... her school-room, and none but men for comrades; but Nina liked it; and her father had a theory in his madness. He was a Bohemian, not in practice only, but in principle; he preached Bohemianism as the most rational manner of existence, maintaining that it developed what was intrinsic and authentic in one's character, saved one from the artificial, and brought one into immediate contact with the realities of the world; and ...
— Grey Roses • Henry Harland
... silenced my foolish quibbling, and went on to the test of a convert's fervour and sincerity in confession. And here was assuredly a fresh source of pain and disquiet, and one not so easily vanquished. "The theory had appeared, as a whole, fair and rational, but the reality, in some of ...
— The Priest, The Woman And The Confessional • Father Chiniquy |
