"Contemplative" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... desires. Practical work involves a love of glory and honor. We are so organized that we find enjoyment only in what our own peculiar endowment can yield. A very sensible organization which you may take as an example. My work is contemplative, speculative and affords enjoyment through the satisfaction of correct discoveries and clear vision. In practical life I am unhappy, with money, honor, glory and all. But you, Judge Elkinson, have need of me for this very quality. ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... with a start, seeing them at some little distance. His full, contemplative eyes rested upon them for a moment almost devoid of questioning. It was not the face of a man who finds himself confronted with the discovery of his duplicity and his hypocrisy. There was a strange doubt stirring in the blacksmith's heart As he approached ...
— The Riddle Of The Rocks - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... So grave, dignified, gentlemanly, and courteous did these fine truck-horses look—so full of calm intelligence and sagacity, that often I endeavored to get into conversation with them, as they stood in contemplative attitudes while their loads were preparing. But all I could get from them was the mere recognition of a friendly neigh; though I would stake much upon it that, could I have spoken in their language, I would have derived from them a good deal of valuable information touching the docks, ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... a later fruit; but it is ripening now. We have more Sisters of Charity than contemplative nuns, at this time. There are hospitals in every Christian land for the sick and the aged. It is remembered now, too, that Christ had compassion on the blind, and the deaf, and the insane: and charity to these is now the Christianity ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau
... might easily have been mistaken for a slightly built and shapelier variety of the gorilla but for the true man-hands and the steady, contemplative, foreseeing look in the eyes. He came and examined the mangled bulk of the Dinoceras, scrutinized the horns and tusks minutely, and strove with all his force to wrench one of the latter from its socket, as if hoping to make some use of it. ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... Egypt, till the Murd'rous King Were dead, who sought his life, and missing fill'd With Infant blood the streets of Bethlehem; From Egypt home return'd, in Nazareth Hath been our dwelling many years, his life 80 Private, unactive, calm, contemplative, Little suspicious to any King; but now Full grown to Man, acknowledg'd, as I hear, By John the Baptist, and in publick shown, Son own'd from Heaven by his Father's voice; I look't for some great change; to Honour? no, But trouble, as old Simeon plain foretold, That to the fall and rising he should ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... philosophers, as they scorn to delight, so must they be content little to move: saving wrangling, whether virtue be the chief, or the only good: whether the contemplative, or the active life do excel: which Plato and Boethius well knew, and therefore made Mistress Philosophy very often borrow the masking raiment of poesy. For even those hard-hearted evil men, who think virtue a school name, and know no other good but indulgere genio, and therefore ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... especially numbers and localities, the aspect and even names of which change with a wonderful degree of rapidity in the progress of London out of town. Thus many places become daily more and more confused, and at last completely lose their identity, to the regret of the contemplative mind, which loves to associate objects with the recollection of those who "have left their celebrity ...
— A Walk from London to Fulham • Thomas Crofton Croker
... incongruity additions and accommodations adapted to the needs of each successive occupant, who, being for the most part proprietor, was at liberty to follow his own fancy, so that these humble dwellings remind the contemplative spectator of a production of Nature, and may (using a strong expression) rather be said to have grown than to have been erected—to have risen, by an instinct of their own, out of the native rock—so little is there in them of formality, such is ...
— Wordsworth • F. W. H. Myers
... with Sarah had already taught him the expediency of keeping her in action. Sarah on the move might do some very startling things but a contemplative Sarah ...
— Rainbow Hill • Josephine Lawrence
... had been so calm and sheltered, that she had had no experience of contrary winds, and her natural disposition was so equable, that she had very little consciously to struggle against. Perhaps her chief temptation lay in a tendency to placid contemplative Christianity, without sufficient active interest in others; and Lucy's opposite qualities acted as a counteracting stimulus, while Mary's peaceful spirit of trusting faith calmed and soothed Lucy's rather impatient disposition. Thus in all true loving Christian companionship we may help each ...
— Lucy Raymond - Or, The Children's Watchword • Agnes Maule Machar
... Could any contemplative mind doubt for a moment the ability of the white population of the Union, if justly disposed, to raise the colored population of the country, in a short time, to the platform of a decent respectability? With unjust prejudice laid aside, and the work of beneficence acquiesced in, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... through the forest, her short, stiff, grey hair stood up in irregular tufts above her weather-beaten forehead. Her host, sitting sidewise on the edge of the table so that he could swing one leg freely and spit cleanly through the open window, bit off a contemplative quid of "blackjack" tobacco, and waited for her to unfold the ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... for of God alone is it true that His Being is His Happiness. Secondly, life means the operation of the living, by which operation the principle of life is made actual: thus we speak of active and contemplative life, or of a life of pleasure. And in this sense eternal life is said to be the last end, as is clear from John 17:3: "This is eternal life, that they may know ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas
... Further, while He lived in mortal flesh, it behooved Christ to lead a most perfect life. But the most perfect is the contemplative life, as we have stated in the Second Part (II-II, Q. 182, AA. 1, 2). Now, solitude is most suitable to the contemplative life; according to Osee 2:14: "I will lead her into the wilderness, and I will speak to her heart." ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... once inhaled it, or thought to the mind in which it has once been conceived. I defied Heaven itself to rob me of this divine embodying of my desires. I had seen her, and that was enough. For the contemplative, to see is to enjoy. It scarcely mattered to me whether she loved me, or whether she passed me by without perceiving me. I had been touched by her splendor, and was still enveloped in her rays; she could no more withdraw ...
— Raphael - Pages Of The Book Of Life At Twenty • Alphonse de Lamartine
... subtlety had become transmuted into emotional, and the harshness had disappeared; he would have been called a sad man but for his constant care not to divide himself from lively friends by piping notes out of harmony with theirs. Contemplative, he allowed his mind to be a quiet meeting-place for memories and hopes. So that, naturally enough, since succeeding to the agricultural calling, and up to his present age of thirty-two, he had neither advanced nor receded as a capitalist—a stationary ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy
... here till 1822, since which period the place has been totally abandoned as a military station. The bank at this place is high and the spot where the Barracks stood very pleasant, commanding a fine view of the adjacent country, having a beautiful Island directly in front. To a contemplative mind this spot must be interesting when he reflects that the soldiers who forced their way from Fredericton through the wilderness to construct these works, have fallen by the sword and disease; that the men who projected them, as well as those who superintended their construction, are ...
— First History of New Brunswick • Peter Fisher
... then, says Syrianus, do ideas subsist according to the contemplative lovers of truth? We reply, intelligibly and tetradically ([Greek: noeros kai tetradikos]), in animal itself ([Greek: en to antozoo]), or the extremity of the intelligible order; but intellectually and decadically ([Greek: noeros kai dekadikos]), in the intellect of the artificer of ...
— Introduction to the Philosophy and Writings of Plato • Thomas Taylor
... dazzle by paying off certain old scores; even now how beautifully he plays the disinterested to curtain the designs of his ambition! John, nevertheless, did wake from his years of stupor to find himself in an uncertain position;—this was manifest by the manner in which he assumed a contemplative mood. A few shakes at the hands of his rougher politicians aroused his apprehension of being swamped in the political perplexity. Mr. Smooth paused, and took a careful view of the venerable old man, that he might learn something more of him. 'Stranger.' ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton
... ill-deserving if it seems to merit resentment and punishment. Nature has inscribed on the heart, apart from all reflection on the utility of punishment, an independent, immediate, and instinctive approbation of the sacred law of retribution. This is the point at which a hitherto purely contemplative sympathy passes over into an active impulse, which prepares us to support the victim of attack and insult in his ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... with contemplative favor. He was a stout, stockily-built man, with a square head and sparse gray hair that would persist in tangling and curling at the ends; and he perpetually kept his sleeves rolled up ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester
... sitting quietly in your room, free from all disturbing thoughts and influences. Then stand up and, assuming an easy position, cast the eyes upward and hold them in that position for thirty seconds. Instantly and involuntarily you will be conscious of a tendency toward reverential, devotional, contemplative ideas and thoughts. Then turn the eyes sideways, glancing directly to the right or to the left, through half-closed lids. Within thirty seconds images of suspicion, of uneasiness, or of dislike, will rise unbidden in the mind. Turn the eyes to one side and slightly downward, ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... a fine nature—a contemplative mind imbued with a true love of literature, and a kindness of heart that melts and makes those of others melt, for the evils to ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... Presbyterians and Scotch-Irish. Curses and anathemas were no check to the fertile soil. Grist continued to come to the mill; and the agricultural products poured into Philadelphia to be carried away in the ships. The contemplative Quaker took his profits as they passed; enacted his liberalizing laws, his prison reform, his charities, his peace with the savage Indians; allowed science, research, and all the kindly arts of life to flourish; and seemed perfectly contented with the damnation in the other ...
— The Quaker Colonies - A Chronicle of the Proprietors of the Delaware, Volume 8 - in The Chronicles Of America Series • Sydney G. Fisher
... prayerbooks and abandoned hassocks. It had the effect of a preposterous misfit. Johnson consulted with a thin-legged, short-skirted verger about the disposition of the party. The officiating clergy appeared distantly in the doorway of the vestry, putting on his surplice, and relapsed into a contemplative cheek-scratching that was manifestly habitual. Before the bride arrived Mr. Polly's sense of the church found an outlet in whispered criticisms of ecclesiastical architecture with Johnson. "Early Norman arches, eh?" he ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... you," replied the Prefect, as he gave a long, steady, and contemplative puff, and settled himself in his chair. "I will tell you in a few words; but, before I begin, let me caution you that this is an affair demanding the greatest secrecy, and that I should most probably lose the position ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... at Colonos, was a work of Sophocles' old age; and while it can hardly be said that the fire of tragic feeling is abated in either of these plays, dramatic effect is modified in both of them by the influence of the poet's contemplative mood. The interest of the action in the Philoctetes is more inward and psychological than in any other ancient drama. The change of mind in Neoptolemus, the stubborn fixity of will in Philoctetes, contrasted with ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles
... her chamber. After mass she taketh something to recreate nature, and soe goeth to the chapelle, hearinge the divine service and two lowe masses. From thence to dynner, during the tyme of whih she hath a lecture of holy matter (that is, reading from a religious book), either Hilton of Contemplative and Active Life, or some other spiritual and instructive work. After dynner she giveth audyence to all such as hath any matter to shrive unto her, by the space of one hower, and then sleepeth one quarter of an hower, and after she hath slept she contynueth in prayer until the first peale ...
— Richard III - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... generated, on the one hand, in men of the world laxity of moral principle and habit, on the other hand, in minds of a more contemplative cast, it *lapsed into atheism*. From otiose gods, careless of human affairs, the transition was natural to a belief in no gods. The universe which could preserve and govern itself, could certainly have sprung into uncaused existence; for the tendencies which, ...
— A Manual of Moral Philosophy • Andrew Preston Peabody
... the fire a contemplative poke, "if you'd seen as much sorrow in the world as I have, you wouldn't want to write a ...
— Novel Notes • Jerome K. Jerome
... last to an end; he was glad when another almost immediately began. He was in luck; doubtless this was a brigade on the move. He proposed to have his breakfast at the window, when it came as come it soon must, thus refreshing his hungry body and his contemplative mind at the same time. The second battalion, as the first, were fine fellows all, suggesting the might of the Allies and the futility of the enemy's protracted resistance. Again the comic relief ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, January 3, 1917 • Various
... Caesars—stately busts in marble—ranged round," each of these recalled by memory suggests some deep thought or some pleasant turn. The opening passage at once sets the note of the whole, and may be taken as a representation of Lamb's contemplative mood: ...
— Charles Lamb • Walter Jerrold
... even more anxiously contemplative. He thought of the long, weary way to the present trading post, and of how it would be equally long and weary were a new post to be located in the hunting grounds of Little Peter. He knew how soft was the snow when it began to melt in early spring, how the snow ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo
... laughter came from the windows as the villagers, slowly opening the papers they held, came upon the caricature of Peggy McNutt. The subject of the cartoon had, with his usual aggressiveness, secured the best "standing room" available, and his contemplative, protruding eyes were yet fixed upon the interior of the workroom. But now, his curiosity aroused, he looked at the paper to see what his neighbors were laughing at, and his expression of wonder slowly changed to a broad grin. He straightened ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces on Vacation • Edith Van Dyne
... even, of Bismarck, man of blood and iron though he was, who had builded a structure which, whilst not founded on liberty, yet was capable and gave promise of going down into history as one of the greatest examples of enlightened and even beneficent autocracy; who, in the contemplative and mellowed wisdom of his old age, often warned the nation against the very spirit which, alas, came to have sway over it, and against the very ...
— Right Above Race • Otto Hermann Kahn
... waiting for Joanna outside the Law Courts. In the stillness of the August evening and the yellow dusty sunshine, he looked almost contemplative, standing there with bowed head, looking down at his hands which were folded on his stick, while one or two pigeons strutted about at his feet. Joanna's heart melted at the sight of him. She went up to him, ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... an insight into futurity, and had become aware of the transitory nature of all things, and even of the fate of the gods, who were doomed to pass away. This knowledge so affected his spirits that he ever after wore a melancholy and contemplative expression. ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... taken from the longer and more elaborate of the two MSS. containing the Treatise. The shorter form of his work On Grace and the Epistle have been added in the hope that they may meet the need of all, contemplative or active as ...
— The Form of Perfect Living and Other Prose Treatises • Richard Rolle of Hampole
... another cigarette and blew a contemplative whiff toward the crystal: "No: at best the game is a crooked one, even for the few who have really any ...
— Athalie • Robert W. Chambers
... the Abbey meads was a small fish-pond where the monks used to spend many a contemplative hour with rod and line. One day, when they had had very bad luck and only caught twelve fishes amongst them, Brother Jonathan suddenly declared that as there was no sport that day he would put forth a riddle ...
— The Canterbury Puzzles - And Other Curious Problems • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... the exacter studies of later ages. Light, as the indispensable condition of life, is no dream, but a fact; sight is the highest sentient faculty; and the luminous rays are real intellectual stimulants.[186-1] But such reflections will not escape the contemplative reader. ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... object, and it is a perception or an idea; at another time it perceives a connection, and it is a judgment; at yet another, it perceives connections between connections, and it is an act of reason. But however subtle the object it contemplates may become, it does not depart from its contemplative attitude, and cognition is but ...
— The Mind and the Brain - Being the Authorised Translation of L'me et le Corps • Alfred Binet
... little boy or girl, sometimes an old woman, and early in the morning whoever has the post collects the whole flock, drives it to a chosen feeding ground, spends the day there, and brings it back at night. It must be a contemplative life, and in dry weather pleasant. I think it would suit a philosopher if he could choose his days. In our Franconian village the gooseherd was a little boy, vastly proud of his job. Every morning, long before we were up, he would stride past our windows ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... now have in hand. On this we are quite unable to speculate. Our affections as yet circulate through it. We no more feel or know it than we feel the feet, or the hand, or the brain of our body. The new deed is yet a part of life,—remains for a time immersed in our unconscious life. In some contemplative hour it detaches itself from the life like a ripe fruit,[46] to become a thought of the mind. Instantly it is raised, transfigured; the corruptible has put on incorruption.[47] Henceforth it is an object of beauty, however base ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... taken, is a juvenile classic. She ranks very high among the women poets of the nineteenth century, her only equal being Mrs. Browning. Besides the brief poems in Sing-Song, Miss Rossetti's "Goblin Market" and "Uphill" please young people of a contemplative mood. While there is an undercurrent of sadness in much of her work, it is a natural accompaniment of her themes and ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... finest pictures here is Domenichino's Cumean Sibyl, which, like all other masterpieces, defies the copyist and engraver. The Sibilla Persica of Guercino hangs a little to the left; and with her contemplative air, and the pen in her hand, she looks as if she were recording the effusions of her more inspired sister. The former is a chaste and beautiful picture, full of feeling and sweetly coloured; but the vicinity of Domenichino's magnificent creation throws it rather into shade. Two unfinished pictures ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... the preaching of St. Patrick. Then the Christian religion was embraced and cultivated with an uncommon zeal, which displayed itself in the number and consequence of the persons who in all parts embraced the contemplative life. This mode of life, and the situation of Ireland, removed from the horror of those devastations which shook the rest of Europe, made it a refuge for learning, almost extinguished everywhere ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... court. He is fat and indolent and contemplative; but is business-like and capable when a fly comes about —reaches out a tongue like a teaspoon and takes him in. He gums his tongue first. He is always pious, in his looks. And pious and thankful both, when Providence or one of us ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... agree With a quiet, peaceable man like me, Who am not of that nervous and meagre kind That are always distressed in body and mind! And at times it really does me good To come down among this brotherhood, Dwelling forever under ground, Silent, contemplative, round and sound; Each one old, and brown with mould, But filled to the lips with the ardor of youth, With the latent power and love of truth, And with ...
— The Golden Legend • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... mode, the form, the application, would naturally spring up. Besides, would it not be safer, wiser, to modify ideas by experience, to look abroad for patterns, to seek for an equilibrium, a juste milieu? Thus there was a diversity of systems, but all contemplative of change. No one was in favor of standing still, for there was nothing to stand upon. In a word, the agitation was not so much one of measures, of principles, or of prejudices, as ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... Angler, or the Contemplative Man's Recreation, being a discourse of Fish and Fishing, not unworthy the perusal of most Anglers, of 18 pence price. Written by Iz. Wa. Also the Gipsee, never till now published: Both printed for Richard Marriot, ...
— The Complete Angler 1653 • Isaak Walton
... have heard from that dear departed saint, Frau Therese, that healing herbs grow there which are good for wounds; in botany books I have read that they will even make boiled flesh sound again. Then, too, I long for a quiet, contemplative life after all my trials; after the sybarite existence I have led, I long for the rustic joys of the golden age. Give me ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... price, and you will feel the difference between form that impresses by sheer aesthetic rightness and form that reminds you of the late Sir Henry Irving. With all its elaborate quietness, this deep-contemplative Lohan is just a piece of rhetoric: put it beside something first-rate and you will know what to think of it as surely as you ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... the abode of tranquility." All was still: not a sound was heard save soft murmuring tones which seemed to whisper in the ear of the weary traveller, "Come, and partake of nature's bounty," and to complain that such an offer should be made in vain. To a contemplative mind, such a scene might have suggested a thousand delightful reflections. But what charms could it have for the soul of Alexander, whose breast was filled with schemes of ambition and conquest; whose eye was familiarised with rapine and slaughter; and whose ears were accustomed to the clash ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... to read. As he scanned the copies of directives, reports, operations logs, and procedures the process became automatic, and part of his consciousness turned contemplative. ...
— A Fine Fix • R. C. Noll
... is a place for eugenics in every type of religion. In practice, it will probably make an impression only on the dynamic religions,—those that are actually accomplishing something. Buddhism, for example, is perhaps too contemplative to do anything. But Christianity, above any other, would seem to be the natural ally of the eugenist. Christianity itself is undergoing a rapid change in ideals at present, and it seems impossible that this evolution should leave its adherents ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson
... life, except that he was Secretary to the Board of Rites and retired from this position to lead the contemplative life. His introduction to the European world is entirely due to Professor Giles. No mention is made of him in the French collection of the T'ang poets by the Marquis de Saint-Denys. Yet the importance of his work cannot well be over-estimated. He is perhaps the most ...
— A Lute of Jade/Being Selections from the Classical Poets of China • L. Cranmer-Byng
... that the spirit of Palamas rests within the narrow confines of his native land. On the contrary, it knows no chains and travels freely about the earth. He is a faithful servant of "Melete," the Muse of contemplative study, a service which is very seldom liked by Modern Greeks. In his preface to his collection of critical essays entitled Grammata he rebukes his fellow countrymen for this: "On an old attic vase," he says, "stand the three original Muses, the ones that ...
— Life Immovable - First Part • Kostes Palamas
... road, six and twenty miles." "You seem to have no stragglers." "Never allow straggling." "You must teach my people; they straggle badly." A bow in reply. Just then my creoles started their band and a waltz. After a contemplative suck at a lemon, "Thoughtless fellows for serious work" came forth. I expressed a hope that the work would not be less well done because of the gayety. A return to the lemon gave me the opportunity to retire. Where Jackson got his lemons "no fellow could find out," but he was rarely without ...
— Destruction and Reconstruction: - Personal Experiences of the Late War • Richard Taylor
... contemplative mood forcibly reminds us of that sublime passage of holy writ, wherein that thrilling command is embodied, to "Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth, when he shall rise up at the voice of ...
— Canada and the Canadians, Vol. 2 • Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... the ash from his cigar, and took a long contemplative whiff, as if he were about making a plunge into views even more profound. Mr. Newt, half pleased with the show of philosophy, listened with less ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... the road and distance marched that day. 'Keezleton road, six-and-twenty miles.' 'You seem to have no stragglers.' 'Never allow straggling.' 'You must teach my people; they straggle badly.' A bow in reply. Just then my Creoles started their band for a waltz. After a contemplative suck at a lemon, 'Thoughtless fellows for serious work' came forth. I expressed a hope that the work would not be less well done because of the gaiety. A return to the lemon gave me the opportunity to retire. Where Jackson got his lemons 'No fellow could ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... pace. If a dog barked it was in sleepy fashion. He yelped merely to check his loneliness. There could be no venom on his drowsy tooth. The very cows that fed along its fences were of a slower breed and more contemplative whisk of tail than are found upon the thoroughfares. Sheep patched the fields with gray and followed their sleepy banquet across ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks
... seemed to amuse the others, and the party broke up. A little later Florent returned to Lebigre's, and indeed he became quite attached to the "cabinet," finding a seductive charm in Robine's contemplative silence, Logre's fiery outbursts, and Charvet's cool venom. When he went home, he did not at once retire to bed. He had grown very fond of his attic, that girlish bedroom, where Augustine had left scraps of ribbons, souvenirs, and other feminine trifles lying about. There still remained ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... cast by our author upon the validity of "the principle of the Unconditioned or the Infinite." "Supposing it were conceded that some faint glimmering of this great truth [the existence of a First Cause] might, by induction, have been discovered by contemplative minds, by what means could they have demonstrated to themselves that he is eternal, self-existent, immortal, and independent?"[365] "Between things visible and invisible, time and eternity, beings finite and beings infinite, objects of sense and objects of faith, the connection is not perceptible ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... at this crisis that taste alone—that faculty which, holding a middle position between the pure intellect and the moral sense, could never safely have been disregarded—it was now that taste alone could have led us gently back to Beauty, to Nature, and to Life. But alas for the pure contemplative spirit and majestic intuition of Plato! Alas for the [Greek: mousichae] which he justly regarded as an all-sufficient education for the soul! Alas for him and for it!—since both were most desperately needed, when both were most entirely forgotten or despised [1]. Pascal, a philosopher whom ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... straggling village of many dogs and swarthy, grimy-faced children, he tarried until well after dark, making his meal of coffee, frijoles, and chili con carne, thereafter smoking a contemplative pipe. Abandoning the little lunch-room to the flies and silence he crossed the road to the saloon kept by Pete Nunez, the brother of the man whom it was Norton's present business to make answer for a crime committed. Pete, a law-abiding citizen nowadays, principally for the reason that he had ...
— The Bells of San Juan • Jackson Gregory
... eminently foreign to him. Quite on the other side lay Sterling's faults, such as they were. In fact, you could observe, in spite of his sleepless intellectual vivacity, he was not properly a thinker at all; his faculties were of the active, not of the passive or contemplative sort. A brilliant improvisatore; rapid in thought, in word and in act; everywhere the promptest and least hesitating of men. I likened him often, in my banterings, to sheet-lightning; and reproachfully prayed that he would concentrate ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... away from me, contemplative. She, too, was young. Ardor appealed to her. Life stood before her, beckoning, as to me. What could the girl ...
— 54-40 or Fight • Emerson Hough
... these reflexions was very just; but it was not exactly true that Ralph Touchett had had a key put into his hand. His cousin was a very brilliant girl, who would take, as he said, a good deal of knowing; but she needed the knowing, and his attitude with regard to her, though it was contemplative and critical, was not judicial. He surveyed the edifice from the outside and admired it greatly; he looked in at the windows and received an impression of proportions equally fair. But he felt that he saw it only by glimpses and that he had not yet stood under the roof. ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... the intense effect of the lyric is due. Like the essay the lyric is a subjective composition; it is confessedly the expression of the poet's personal emotion and his own experiences. His mind, his soul, speak to us; he does not interpret the thoughts and feelings of another. The lyric is usually contemplative and full of the choicest results of the poet's meditations. It influences action indirectly through direct ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... Vincenzo Monti, it is an interesting comment on its effervescent, unstable, fictitious, and partial nature that he was its most conspicuous poet. Few men appear so base as Monti; but it is not certain that he was of more fickle and truthless soul than many other contemplative and cultivated men of the poetic temperament who are never confronted with exigent events, and who therefore never betray the vast difference that lies between the ideal heroism of the poet's vision and the actual heroism of occasion. We all have excellent principles until we are ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... the suggestion yet more irrational. She was lustrous with lovable qualities, which he genially recognized and appreciated; nay, he might love her, but the love would be a quasi-paternal one, not the love that demands absolute possession and brooks no rivalry. His attitude was contemplative and beneficent, not selfish and exclusive. His greatest pleasure would be to see her married to some one worthy of her. Meantime he might devote himself to her freely ...
— David Poindexter's Disappearance and Other Tales • Julian Hawthorne
... "faithfully done into the English tongue," apparently by Randall, "for the common good."[69] It is a profoundly mystical book, characterized by interior depth and insight. Its central aim is the exposition of a stage of spiritual life which transcends both "the active life" and "the contemplative life," a stage which the writer calls "the Life Supereminent." In this highest stage "the essential will of God is practiced," without strain or effort, because God Himself has now become the inner Life and ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... all speculation, whether theological or scientific—the one as leading to heresy, the other to sensual ends, such as riches, fame, and those lusts of the flesh and that pride of intellect which were fatal to the contemplative and ascetic ideals of ...
— The Faust-Legend and Goethe's 'Faust' • H. B. Cotterill
... same rule holds that applies to fashion,—"Alike fantastic if too new or old." Fashion changes, not only the fashions of millinery but of literature also. When the world is tired of the brilliant wit of Byron, it turns in relief to the contemplative verse of Wordsworth; when Longfellow and Tennyson have had their artistic day and a thousand imitators have ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb
... grandfather, wise prince that he was, would have been far from scorning the counsel of devout women in whom was the voice of God. About the year 1380 he had summoned to Paris Guillemette de la Rochelle, who led a solitary and contemplative life, and acquired such great power therefrom, so it was said, that during her transports she raised herself more than two feet from the ground. In many a church King Charles V had beautiful oratories built, where she might pray for him.[637] The grandson should do no less, for his need was still ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... sleuth-hound,[224-1] Holmes, the relentless, keen-witted, ready-handed criminal agent, as it was possible to conceive. In his singular character the dual nature alternately presented itself, and his extreme exactness and astuteness represented, as I have often thought, the reaction against the poetic and contemplative mood which occasionally predominated in him. The swing of his nature took him from extreme languor to devouring energy; and, as I knew well, he was never so truly formidable as when, for days on end, he had been lounging in his arm-chair amid his improvisations and his black-letter ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... the stables. He was within a hop, step, and jump of me. But he had a lanthorn in his hand, and he did not see me, being as I was darkling." Saying this, he assisted Miss Melville to mount. He troubled her little during the route; on the contrary, he was remarkably silent and contemplative, a circumstance by no means disagreeable to Emily, to whom his conversation ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... manner of high-mounted bands and neckerchiefs for women, which did so closely cover their bosoms that men could no more put their hands under. For they had put the slit behind, and those neckcloths were wholly shut before, whereat the poor sad contemplative lovers were much discontented. Upon a fair Tuesday I presented a petition to the court, making myself a party against the said gentlewomen, and showing the great interest that I pretended therein, protesting that ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... flash of lightning plays in Mr. Day's hair, and illuminates the contents of the volume. The poetic fancy and what were then the politics of the original, appear in the choice of subject and attitude. Dr. Darwin sat to Mr. Wright about the same period. That was a simply contemplative portrait, of the ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... Squincher, As in contemplative pose, He stood before the looking-glass And burnished up his nose, And brushed the dandruff from a span- Spick-splinter suit of clothes,— "Why, bless you, Mr. Squincher, You're as handsome ...
— Nye and Riley's Wit and Humor (Poems and Yarns) • Bill Nye
... this unmerited persecution fell on Brother Gorenflot, he had led a contemplative and easy life, diverting himself on occasions at the Corne d'Abondance, when he had gained a little money from the faithful. He was one of those monks for whom the world began at the prior of the convent, and finished at the cook. And now he was sent forth to seek for ...
— Chicot the Jester - [An abridged translation of "La dame de Monsoreau"] • Alexandre Dumas
... by all these subjects; quite enthusiastic, in his way, about the interests of the people, and the new field of exertion which his present prospects open to him. It is plain that he has a genius more fitted for active than for contemplative life,—and so much the better for him; for a man, this is the happiest of dispositions: and he will be happy; for there is nothing in his character incompatible with quiet enjoyment; no violent passions and feelings; no morbid sensibility; with him all is sober, ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton
... and holy man, Bishop Wulstan. She had lately been reading, in the Chronicles of Florence, the monk of Worcester, how "in his early life, when appointed to be chanter and treasurer of the Church, Wulstan embraced the opportunity of serving God with less restraint, giving himself up to a contemplative life, going into the church day and night to pray and read the Bible. So devoted was he to sacred vigils that not only would he keep himself awake during the night, but day and night also; and when the urgency of nature at last compelled him to sleep, he did not pamper ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay
... to spear up the pieces of paper which the people of London have left behind; and this paper-sticking is really the best sport to be enjoyed now on Hampstead Heath, unless one counts fishing for dace in the ponds, which I take to be the most contemplative recreation, except coal-mining, in ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 26, 1920 • Various
... commented Fairchilds, his contemplative gaze moving from the face of Mrs. Wackernagel to Tillie. "But," he questioned, "Mrs. Wackernagel, why are your daughters allowed to do what you think wrong and would ...
— Tillie: A Mennonite Maid - A Story of the Pennsylvania Dutch • Helen Reimensnyder Martin
... we can derive nothing from pure contemplation. There is mystery and wonder in the veil of the occult. The earth, our life, is merely a vestibule of the universe. Contemplation alone will hold us all as inapt and as impotent as the old Monks of Athos. We have mountains of literature behind us, all contemplative, and whatever its wisdom, it has given us not one thing outside the abstract. From Plato down to the present our philosophy has given us not one tangible proof, not one concrete fact which we can place our hands on. We are virtually where we were originally; ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... questioned, gave in the midst of that big assemblage of contemplative Munis a full and proper answer in words consonant with their ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa - Translated into English Prose - Adi Parva (First Parva, or First Book) • Kisari Mohan Ganguli (Translator)
... Montague sat Somers, lord keeper; older, of more steady demeanor, of fuller figure, of bold face and full light eye, a politician, not a ponderer. At the right of Montague, grave, silent, impassive, now and again turning a contemplative eye about him, sat that great man. Sir Isaac Newton, known then to every nobleman, and now to every schoolboy, of the world. A gem-like mind, keen, clear, hard and brilliant, exact in every facet, and forsooth held in the setting of ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... a song, and sat down to play his own accompaniment with a light and beautiful touch which came as a surprise to the listening women, who knew nothing of his drawing-room talents. He went from song to song, and all at once Marie, transferring her gaze from contemplative dreams, saw Julia's face. Julia leaned forward with her elbows on her knees, her chin in her palms, looking at the man at the piano, and in her eyes ran the old tale, and her red lips smiled and her breast ...
— Married Life - The True Romance • May Edginton
... Even the Child, usually as restless as the dragonflies themselves or those exponents of perpetual motion, the brown water skippers, was lying on his back, quite still, and staring up with round, contemplative blue eyes through the diaphanous ...
— Children of the Wild • Charles G. D. Roberts
... a contemplative turn of mind, he pursued the track of the mystical divines, and having acquired great reputation in Spain, and being desirous of propagating his sublime mode of devotion, he left his own country, and ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... his part, went into the Faubourg and crossed to the river side of that wide street. It thus happened that he missed seeing Mr. Joseph Mangles, sunning himself upon the more frequented pavement, and smoking a contemplative cigar. Mr. Mangles would have stopped him had they met. Paul Deulin was not far behind Mr. Mangles, idling past the shops, which could scarcely have had much interest ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... original Greek form (aisthetikos) it means what has to do with sense-perception as a source of knowledge; and this is still its meaning in Kant's philosophy ("Transcendental Aesthetic''). Its limitation to that function of sensuous perception which we know as the contemplative enjoyment of beauty is due to A. G. Baumgarten. Although the subject does not readily lend itself to precise definition at the outset, we may indicate itsscope and aim, as undeibtood by recent writers, by saying that it deals successively with one great ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... contemplative attitude after the servant had withdrawn for the second time, and it is doubtful how long she would have remained sunk in apparent lethargy had not the unexpected sound of the hall-door bell caused her to ...
— The Mystics - A Novel • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... unnoted with the little shaded lamp shining on his face. Instantly, in her quick fashion, she christened him, Hibou, and Hibou or Owl, became his nickname in that establishment. Indeed, with his dark eyes and strongly marked features, wrapped in a contemplative calm such as the study of the stars engenders, in that gloom he did look something like an owl, however different may have been ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard
... ascent you pass to a higher and much larger mountain, which seems formed by nature for a lonely contemplative life; for on one side it looks upon the sea, and on the other is covered with old trees, always green, which at once make a fruitful and a pleasing object. Hither St Thomas retired to pray with his disciples; and here it was also that he ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden
... which they may be thrown. This was probably the case even where that influence tended to degrade him from the plane he would have occupied, if left to himself. His spiritual life seemed to lack that vigor and buoyancy so infinitely important to contemplative men. He appeared to be ever yearning for something which should add robustness to his convictions. After a pause of some ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... man to rule society with dignity; Mr. Watt, to lead the contemplative life of a deeply introverted and patiently observant philosopher. He was one of the most complete specimens of the melancholic temperament. His head was generally bent forward, or leaning on his hand in meditation; his shoulders stooping, and his chest falling in; his limbs lank and ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... that, suh," would be the answer given with a contemplative squint of the placid, pale eye. "I reckin my calculations won't be very fur out ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... volume of poems in less than four months, and had not taken time to reconsider them. They were not narrative pieces, in which the interest of the story carries you along in reading, whether the diction is perfected or not, but mostly short lyrical poems, and contemplative pieces, which are always much more effective when found amongst other descriptions of poetry or in a magazine, than when collected together in a volume. They were generally sad, a common fault with poetesses; but poor Elsie had more ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence
... current now and floating by his side. "It's Mamie—so far as I've had it from you—who'll be their great card." And then as his contemplative silence wasn't a denial she significantly added: "I ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... too often confined to the ungrateful task of analyzing the uniform play of human passions, is occasionally rewarded by the appearance of events, which strike like a hand from heaven, into the nicely adjusted machinery of human plans, and carry the contemplative mind to a higher order of things. Of this kind, is the sudden retirement of Gustavus Adolphus from the scene; — stopping for a time the whole movement of the political machine, and disappointing all the calculations of human prudence. ...
— The History of the Thirty Years' War • Friedrich Schiller, Translated by Rev. A. J. W. Morrison, M.A.
... what is passing in the world, but not to feel the slightest inclination to make or meddle with it. It is such a life as a pure spirit might be supposed to lead, and such an interest as it might take in the affairs of men, calm, contemplative, passive, distant, touched with pity for their sorrows, smiling at their follies without bitterness, sharing their affections, but not troubled by their passions, not seeking their notice, nor once dreamt of by them. He who lives ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... to every part of its progress after hatching, until it becomes a bird, or winged animal, in the form of its parent stock. A farther attention to the nature and quality of the form cannot fail to cause astonishment in the contemplative mind; to observe in the least as well as in the largest kinds, yea, in the invisible as in the visible, that is, in small insects, as in fowls or great beasts, how they are all endowed with organs of sense, ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg
... harvests of autumn, the vicissitudes of the tide and the revolutions of the sky, and praise his Maker in lines which no reader shall lay aside. The subject of the disputation is not piety, but the motives to piety; that of the description is not God, but the works of God. Contemplative piety, or the intercourse between God and the human soul, cannot be poetical. Man admitted to implore the mercy of his Creator, and plead the merits of his Reedemer, is already in a higher state ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... external form of nature and the many beauties around him were disregarded; and at length, after three hours, he sat down to rest at a rock by the wayside. Sitting here, he drew forth from his pocket a well-used pipe, which he filled and lighted; after which he sat smoking, and surveying, in a contemplative manner, the scene ...
— A Castle in Spain - A Novel • James De Mille
... being, turned their attention to other and more trifling matters. Coffee was served in the living room, and through the fragrant smoke of Pennington's fifty-cent perfectos a sprightly three-cornered conversation continued for an hour. Then the Colonel, secretly enraged at the calm, mocking, contemplative glances which Bryce ever and anon bestowed upon him, and unable longer to convince himself that he was too apprehensive—that this cool young man knew nothing and would do nothing even if he knew something—rose, pleaded the necessity for looking over some papers, and bade Bryce good- ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... active Religious Orders could beat all other forms of association at their own game—that they could teach and work more cheaply and effectively, and so on—well, the most foolish Political Economist had to confess that the Religious Orders made for the country's welfare. And as for the Contemplative Orders——" ...
— Dawn of All • Robert Hugh Benson
... forgetting the existence of cities. Farthest of the three homes from the railroad, and where the hills begin, Philip and Ruth Van Doren chose their abode. And you may see them any day that you care to penetrate to their broad pastures, riding together, viewing with contemplative eyes the distant peaks or the cattle that are the Governor's delight, a link, he says, between the present and the olden times when the world was young. And often at night, when they are not with the Congdons or the Bennetts, they ride for hours in silence, so great is ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... to a new life beckoning from three points of the compass. That point which did not beckon was behind them. Flaxen-haired Swedes and Norwegians; square- jawed, round-headed North Germans; square-shouldered, loose-jointed Russians with heavy contemplative eyes and long hair, looked curiously at each other and nodded understandingly. Jostling them all, with a jeer and an oblique joke here and there, and crude chaff on each other and everybody, the settler from the United States asserted himself. He invariably obtruded himself, with ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... have left it for good and all?" asked Macloud, blowing a smoke-ring and watching him with contemplative eyes—"Well, the place is the same—only more so. A good many people have come back. The Heights is more lively than when you left, teas, and dinners, and tournaments and such like.—In town, the Northumberland's resuming its regulars—the ...
— In Her Own Right • John Reed Scott
... consciousness of the world around him would have been a very different affair; however obscure, however reserved, his own personal life, his sense of the life of his fellow-mortals would have been almost infinitely more various. The negative side of the spectacle on which Hawthorne looked out, in his contemplative saunterings and reveries, might, indeed, with a little ingenuity, be made almost ludicrous; one might enumerate the items of high civilization, as it exists in other countries, which are absent from the texture of American life, until it should become a wonder to know what was left. ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.
... religious, so that they may be warned and advise their subordinates of it, so that they may not perplex themselves or meddle in any case of these secular judicial proceedings, or with claims of third parties. For their occupation does not consist in this, but in the contemplative life, and in the exercise of the spiritual activities; and, moreover, the gravest disadvantages to the service of our Lord result from the contrary course. You shall advise me of what you shall do and what you shall have ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 • Emma Helen Blair
... He spoke of me to you?" And the good Nabob, quite proud, would look around him with movements of the head that were supremely laughable, or perhaps assume the contemplative air of a devotee who should hear the name ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... it is true, was not a faultless or steadfast character. No gross or enormous vices were ascribed to him. His habits, as far as appearances enabled one to judge, were temperate and chaste. He was contemplative and bookish, and was vaguely described as being somewhat visionary ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... readers will have seen by the preceding page, we have commenced engraving the above series of pictures. "The Age of Innocence," by Sir J. Reynolds, representing a young Hippopotamus seated under a shady tree, presents to the contemplative mind a charming union of ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood
... consider) the Dramaticall is the most absolute, in regard of those transcendent Abilities, which should waite upon the Composer; who must have more then the instruction of Libraries which of it selfe is but a cold contemplative knowledge there being required in him a Soule miraculously knowing, and conversing with all mankind, inabling him to expresse not onely the Phlegme and folly of thick-skin'd men, but the strength and maturity ...
— The Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher in Ten Volumes - Volume I. • Beaumont and Fletcher
... the Elegy was composed were well adapted to soothe and cherish that contemplative sadness which, when the wounds of grief are healing, it is a luxury to indulge, and that the poet did indulge them is self-evident in many ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various
... too soon. One should not whirl through such a choice bit of England in the cars; one should rather wish to amble over the way after a sleepy, contemplative old horse, as we used to make rural excursions in New England ere yet railroads were. However, all that's bright must fade, and ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... now," said the honourable Frederick Fitzroy, addressing himself to Dashall, "You have now become a retired, steady, contemplative young man; a peripatetic philosopher; tired with the scenes of ton, and deriving pleasure only from the investigation of Real Life in London, accompanied in your wanderings, by your respectable relative of Belville-Hall; and yet while ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... of a blazing hot London day when I went down the hard to the water's edge, among the small, pink-legged boys, paddling, and the usual group of contemplative workmen, who smoke their pipes by the landing place. The river was half empty, and emptying itself still more as the ebb ran down. The haze of heat and twilight blurred shapes and colours, but the fine old houses of the historic "Mall," the tower of the church, and the tall elms ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish
... little of Schopenhauer's passive and contemplative receptivity here! Rather a mingling of being in ...
— Nature Mysticism • J. Edward Mercer
... as a special and sacred office whereby the nun became the mystic bride of the Church, and it was no uncommon thing for the sisters, when racked and tortured by the temptations of the world, to fall into these ecstatic contemplative moods wherein they became possessed with powers beyond those of earth. In that age of quite universal ignorance, it is not to be wondered at that the emotional spirit was too strongly developed in all religious observances, ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... as fat, but by no means as saucy, as ever. Last week his youngest boy died,—little Kirsajee Samsajee Bonnarjee, a contemplative young fire-worshipper, with eyes as profound as the philosophy of Zoroaster. I saw the dismal procession depart from the house, and my heart ached ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... that, if we are the victims of this force, we should have nothing to fear, from the freedom of our Ego, for the autonomy of the determinations of our will. In short the description up to here is sublime, but quite a contemplative, intuitive sublimity:— ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... upon to champion the Alexandrian community in its hour of need. Although the ascent of the stupid but honest Claudius dispelled immediate danger from the Jews and brought them a temporary increase of favor in Alexandria as well as in Palestine, Philo did not return entirely to the contemplative life which he loved; and throughout the latter portion of his life he was the public defender as well as the teacher of his people. He probably died before the reign of Nero, between 50 and 60 C.E. In Jewish ...
— Philo-Judaeus of Alexandria • Norman Bentwich
... is a finer, nobler thought When day is done and night has brought The contemplative hours and sweet, And rest to weary hearts and feet, If man can stand in truth and say: "I have been useful here to-day. Back there is one I chanced to see With ...
— A Heap o' Livin' • Edgar A. Guest
... knowledge which Francis had of the sweets and fruits of mental prayer, he constantly urged his brethren to practise it, and they profited so fully by his instructions, that most of them became spiritual and contemplative men. "A religious," he said, "must principally desire to acquire the spirit of prayer. I believe that, without this, peculiar favors cannot be obtained from God, nor any great progress made in His service. When one is sorrowful and uneasy, he should ...
— The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi • Father Candide Chalippe
... never again subject to it. I long continued to value Wordsworth less according to his intrinsic merits, than by the measure of what he had done for me. Compared with the greatest poets, he may be said to be the poet of unpoetical natures, possessed of quiet and contemplative tastes. But unpoetical natures are precisely those which require poetic cultivation. This cultivation Wordsworth is much more fitted to give, than poets who are intrinsically far ...
— Autobiography • John Stuart Mill
... two shields with rampant lions, which are good. Opposite the Loggia, on the other side of the street, is a highly decorative lintel, which appears to have belonged to a palace of the Cippico, with two contemplative lions and half-length angels in roundels with scrolls. The caps have the same kind of foliage as is seen at Curzoia and Sebenico. The Austrian-Lloyd office is on the ground floor of a tower of the Venetian period, ...
— The Shores of the Adriatic - The Austrian Side, The Kuestenlande, Istria, and Dalmatia • F. Hamilton Jackson
... them find a home under the helmet of the soldier. So they became lifeless; they were at once formally systematized and classified, subjected to strict proportions and rules, and cast, as it were, in moulds. This arrangement enabled the conqueror, without waste of time in that long contemplative stillness out of which alone the beauty of the true Ideal arises, out of which alone man can create like a god, to avail himself at once of the Greek orders, not as a sensitive and delicate means of fine aesthetic expression, but as a mechanical ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... wishes: and returned, without feeling mortified, to the cottage we have described, where he lived a secluded yet not an unhappy life. His wants were few, and his half pay more than adequate to supply them. A happy contemplative indolence, arising from a well cultivated mind, feeding rather upon its previous acquirements, than adding to its store—an equanimity of disposition, and a habit of rigid self-command—were the characteristics of Edward Forster; ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... with the convenient livings and promotions of the church, daily intromit and exercise themselves in secular offices and rooms, as stewards, receivers, auditors, bailiffs, and other temporal occupations, withdrawing themselves from the good contemplative lives that they have professed, not only to the damage but also to the perilous example of your loving and obedient subjects; to this we your bedesmen answer that beneficed men may lawfully be stewards and receivers to their own bishops, as it evidently appeareth ...
— The Reign of Henry the Eighth, Volume 1 (of 3) • James Anthony Froude
... Verisschenzko grew contemplative, "that the result of deliberately turning the current of events like that must have some momentous consequence. Mind you, I think you were right. I should have advised it as I have told you, because of that swine ...
— The Price of Things • Elinor Glyn
... a gate-post! This sort of chariot is affected—particularly at the trot—by a kind of pitching movement to and fro across the axle, which well entitles it to the style of a Noddy. The hood describes a considerable arc against the landscape, with a solemnly absurd effect on the contemplative pedestrian. To ride in such a carriage cannot be numbered among the things that appertain to glory; but I have no doubt it may be useful in liver complaint. Thence, perhaps, its ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the Active and Contemplative Life;—not, I think, a happy one, though beautifully painted. It presents, apart from its terminating comment no necessary intellectual suggestion; is rendered, by the, comment itself, hardly consistent with Leah's express love of ornament; and, if it were not for the last ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... of a contrast, and as a testimonial to the planetary growth of man's emotional nature, gained from the ages of progress; let us question modern man as he leans confidingly, in a contemplative mood, against the broad trunk of some giant of the forest. With uncovered head, he muses in silence; he senses a vague feeling of awe for this magnificent specimen of matured life in the vegetable world. With every sense attuned to the overtones and undertones, produced by the vibrations of nature's ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... Lady Jones, who had it from Sir Simon's family, that I had a more honourable view than at first was apprehended. I said, We fellows of fortune, Mr. Williams, take sometimes a little more liberty with the world than we ought to do; wantoning, very probably, as you contemplative folks would say, in the sunbeams of a dangerous affluence; and cannot think of confining ourselves to the common paths, though the safest and most eligible, after all. And you may believe I could ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson
... sudden embrace, three hours before, the twain had kept apart. She seemed stilled, almost alarmed, at what had occurred, while the novelty, unpremeditation, mastery of circumstance disquieted him—palpitating, contemplative being that he was. He could hardly realize their true relations to each other as yet, and what their mutual bearing should be before ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... moderation. Hence was it that the ancients pronounced Athens to be the seat of sages, because, enriched with an air of the greatest purity, it prepared with glad liberality the lucid intellects of its sons for the contemplative part of life. Assuredly for the body to imbibe muddy waters is a different thing from sucking in the transparency of a sweet fountain. Even so the vigour of the mind is repressed when it is clogged by a heavy atmosphere. Nature herself hath made us subject to these ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... guileless way she has of looking at you. It's a pity she seems a little enthusiastic. And her figure is good, and she moves about lightly, and she has a quiet voice. I like her best when she suddenly stands still, and listens attentively and gravely, then becomes contemplative and shakes her hair back. Yes, I agree, Panshine isn't worthy of her. Yet what harm is there in him? However, as to all that, why am I troubling my head about it? She will follow the same road that all others ...
— Liza - "A nest of nobles" • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... driven out of Paradise, tasting the first fruits of bitterness as they had done of bliss. But their pangs were such as a pure spirit might feel at the sight—their tears "such as angels weep." The pathos is of that mild contemplative kind which arises from regret for the loss of unspeakable happiness, and resignation to inevitable fate. There is none of the fierceness of intemperate passion, none of the agony of mind and turbulence of action, which is the result of the habitual ...
— Lectures on the English Poets - Delivered at the Surrey Institution • William Hazlitt
... philosophy of many of the Church fathers, and so introduced into Christian thought and life the Platonic dualism, that sharp distinction between the temporal and the eternal which belittles the practical life and glorifies the contemplative. ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... waited, watching his dark contemplative eyes as they looked across the water at the ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... evidently still dissatisfied for he continued to back vigorously, drawing the protesting little lamplighter after him. When he had put perhaps twenty feet between himself and the lamp-post Bill achieved his usual upright attitude and his countenance assumed its habitual contemplative expression, the haunted look faded from his sagacious eye and his flaming nostrils resumed their normal benevolent expression. Taking note of these swift changes, it occurred to Mr. Shrimplin that rather ...
— The Just and the Unjust • Vaughan Kester
... the gutter in the Rue du Bac!' I exclaimed with Madame de Stael from the height of the Coppet terrace. The spectacle of nature interests only contemplative and religious minds powerfully. Mine was neither the one nor the other. My habits of analysis and observation make me find more attraction in a characteristic face than in a magnificent landscape; I ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... a standstill. Miss Tyrell, with her toes on the fender, gazed in a contemplative fashion at the fire. "I didn't know——" began Fraser, who was ...
— A Master Of Craft • W. W. Jacobs
... replied Marcos at length in his contemplative way, having given the matter his consideration. And perhaps that was ...
— The Velvet Glove • Henry Seton Merriman
... Exile had opened to me a new heaven and a new earth, whose freshness and calm charmed thought away from all vain questionings; the fascination of outward things had for a while cooled the useless ardour of introspection. But it was inevitable that the bland ease of such a contemplative life should bring no enduring satisfaction to the mind; it was not an end in itself, but a mere means to serenity, a breathing-space useful to the recovery of a long-lost fortitude. The time was ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith |
