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Scepticism   Listen
noun
Scepticism  n.  See Skepticism.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Scepticism" Quotes from Famous Books



... he was no doubt right, and you were wrong in your scepticism. What are called mountain cork and mountain leather are forms of asbestos. They are of no use, unless it be for the lining of safes. The fibrous asbestos can be made ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell

... to him. Finally a tragi-comic story was reported with acclamation in all the papers; his wife played an unenviable part in it. Barbara Paulovna had become a notoriety. He ceased to follow her movements. Scepticism, half formed already by the experiences of his life and by his education, took complete possession of his heart, and ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.

... fixed but changing, and not artless and crystal-clear but excessively complex and obscure. It is, indeed, the chief mark of a man emerged from the general that he has lost most of his original certainties, and is full of a scepticism which plays like a spray of acid upon all the ideas that come within his purview, including especially his own. One does not become surer as one advances in knowledge, but less sure. No article of faith is proof against the disintegrating effects of increasing information; one might ...
— The American Credo - A Contribution Toward the Interpretation of the National Mind • George Jean Nathan

... dames not so very grand, of ornate Latinists and of inarticulate street hawkers, of priests and generals—in fact, the history of all humanity as it appears to his penetrating eye, serving a mind marvellously incisive in its scepticism, and a heart that, of all contemporary hearts gifted with a voice, contains the greatest treasure of charitable irony. As to M. Anatole France's adventures, these are well-known. They lie open to this prodigal world in the four volumes of the Vie Litteraire, describing the adventures ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad

... by incidents with which I have myself been connected, but as many statements have been made about tigers that are utterly absurd and untrue, and as tiger stories generally contain a good deal of exaggeration, and a natural scepticism unconsciously haunts the reader when tigers and tiger shooting are the topics, it may be as well to state once for all, that I shall put down nothing that cannot be abundantly substantiated by reference to my ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis

... the one the latter alleged, and which had so touched her at first that it had brought tears to her eyes. The Anglo-Saxon woman could not help looking at the Latin woman with a little apprehension and a good deal of scepticism. ...
— Fair Margaret - A Portrait • Francis Marion Crawford

... of hostile parties and sects, who courted his acquaintance and respected his predictions. His proceedings were deemed of sufficient importance to be twice made the subject of a parliamentary inquiry; and even after the Restoration—when a little more scepticism, if not more wisdom, might have been expected—we find him examined by a Committee of the House of Commons, respecting his fore-knowledge of the great fire of London. We know not whether it 'should ...
— William Lilly's History of His Life and Times - From the Year 1602 to 1681 • William Lilly

... many an argument, he supporting himself by the opinion of his good friend Sir Matthew Hale. Yet this sounded like the tale of one bewitched; or was it merely the effect of a life of extreme seclusion telling on the nerves of a sensitive girl? My scepticism inclined me to the latter belief, and when she ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell

... that no creature on earth could endure a moment's contact with its surface. The centre of the "pale-faced moon" is hotter than boiling water. This thought may cheer us when "the cold round moon shines deeply down." We may be pardoned if we take with a tincture of scepticism the following statement "Native Chinese records aver that on the 18th day of the 6th moon, 1590, snow fell one summer night from the midst of the moon. The flakes were like fine willow flowers on shreds of silk." [351] Instead of cold, it is more likely ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley

... was situated close to a range of mountains ideally suited to their purposes. They settled, while Zezdon Afthen sent out the message of friendship. He finally succeeded in getting some reaction, a sensation of scepticism, of distrust—but of interest. They needed friends, and only hoped that these were friends. Arcot pushed a little signal button, and Morey began his share of the play. From behind a low hill a slim, pointed form emerged, ...
— Invaders from the Infinite • John Wood Campbell

... At every step to-day we encountered doubt, and contradiction, and cavilling: authorities are marshalled against each other in puzzling array, and the modern unwillingness to be cheated by fine sounds and great names has become a general scepticism. I have no objection to the "shadows, doubts, and darkness" which rest upon all around us; it rather pleases my fancy thus to "dream over the map of things," abandoned to my own cogitations and my own conclusions; but then there are certain points upon which ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson

... unforeseen; he understood his wife,—we can only fully understand those who are near to us, when we are separated from them. He could take up his interests, could work again, though with nothing like his former zeal; scepticism, half-formed already by the experiences of his life, and by his education, took complete possession of his heart. He became indifferent to everything. Four years passed by, and he felt himself strong enough to ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev

... element of novelty from the element of stability; the reality of the intuition, the curve of growth, the moral situation, from the traditional and often symbolic language in which it is given to us. The comparative method helps us towards this; and is thus not, as some would pretend, the servant of scepticism, but rightly used the revealer of the Spirit of Life in its variety of gifts. In this connection we might remember that time—like space—is only of secondary importance to us. Compared with the eons of preparation, the millions of ...
— The Life of the Spirit and the Life of To-day • Evelyn Underhill

... matters is, of course, that of unconditional scepticism. But it is pleasant, occasionally, to take an airing beyond the bounds of incredulity. For my own part, it is true, I must confess my inability to believe in anything positively supernatural. The supernatural and the illusory are to my mind convertible terms: they cannot really exist or ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne

... non-ens; nay, He called things into being, after absolute non-existence, for the elements which be the matter of created things were sheer nothingness. I will expound this to thee, so thou mayst be in no scepticism thereof, and the marvel-signs of the alternation of Night and Day shall make this clear to thee. When the light goeth and the night cometh, the day is hidden from us and we know not the place where it abideth; and when the night passeth away ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton

... war, war. My spirit shall go on warring in some Russian body till all falsehood is swept out of the world. The modern civilization is false, but a new revelation shall come out of Russia. Ha! you say nothing. You are a sceptic. I respect your philosophical scepticism, Razumov, but don't touch the soul. The Russian soul that lives in all of us. It has a future. It has a mission, I tell you, or else why should I have been moved to do this—reckless—like a butcher—in the ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad

... the girls," was of the very same stamp, and would have operated in the very same manner, to the removing of the pious Quaker's doubts. Faith! ye lack faith! cries this prophet in our streets; and when reproved and distressed scepticism enquires where truth is to be found, he bids it back to the loom or the forge, to its tools and its workshop, of whatever kind these may be—there ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various

... any civilization at its true value, the law of God is obviously the highest standard. Yet in these days of divided opinion and extended scepticism, when scarcely any two hold exactly the same religious views, and when all manner of beliefs are professedly founded on Holy Writ, such a comparison would only result in as many different estimates as there are reflecting ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various

... pleasure, in his habits of thought, in his sarcastic scepticism, you see the healthy, clever, well-disposed, tolerant, epicurean, intellectual man ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude

... whole account of Rienzi is superficial and unfair. To the cold and sneering scepticism, which so often deforms the gigantic work of that great writer, allowing nothing for that sincere and urgent enthusiasm which, whether of liberty or religion, is the most common parent of daring action, the great ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... are scorned as subtle and scholastic, in which free discussion and fallible judgment are prized as the birthright of each individual, I must be excused if I exercise towards this age, as regards its belief in this doctrine, some portion of that scepticism which it exercises itself towards every received but unscrutinized assertion whatever. I cannot take it for granted, I must have it brought home to me by tangible evidence, that the spirit of the age means by the Supreme ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman

... menacing reports, which still murmured over our heads, appeared forgotten. For, though this common phenomenon of the season might have shaken the firmness of some few minds, with the majority the time of omens had passed away. A scepticism, ingenious on the part of some, thoughtless or coarse on the part of others, earth-born passions and imperious wants, have diverted the souls of men from that heaven whence they are derived, and to which they should return. The army, therefore, ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur

... of an American coast-trader; in 1769 set up as a trader in Philadelphia, and in course of time establishing a bank, accumulated an immense fortune; during his lifetime he exhibited a strange mixture of niggardliness, scepticism, public charitableness, and a philanthropy which moved him during a yellow-fever epidemic to labour as a nurse in the hospital; at his death he bequeathed $2,000,000 to found an orphanage for boys, attaching to the bequest the remarkable condition, that no clergyman should ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... might well have engendered such a curious vigorous lethargy as Marion's. Its breezes were clean enough to nourish strength, but there was something about the proportions of the scene that would breed scepticism concerning ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West

... passed through many phases. No period has been without it, though the esteem in which it is held has varied a good deal from age to age. English literature is strong in romance; there is something in the English temper which makes scepticism ungrateful to it, and disposes it to treat even dreams seriously. Chaucer, who laughed at the romantic writers of his day, yet gave a new lease of life to Romance in Troilus and Cressida and The Knightes Tale. Many of the poets ...
— Romance - Two Lectures • Walter Raleigh

... designates in a striking way the peculiarity of their piety. The age was spiritually dead. Religion was represented by the high-and-dry formalism of the Pharisees on the one hand and the cold and worldly scepticism of the Sadducees on the other. In the synagogues the people asked for bread and were offered a stone. The scribes, instead of letting the pure river of Bible truth flow over the land, choked up its course with the sand of their soulless commentary. Yet there are good people ...
— The Trial and Death of Jesus Christ - A Devotional History of our Lord's Passion • James Stalker

... originate?" demanded a pompous and elderly gentleman as he tugged at his closely cropped mustache with a nervousness belying his scepticism. His vis-a-vis ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck

... hand, what is said be of the category of Ananias, as distinguished from what alchemists call the Code of Truth, it will be well also to know that some portions of the old orthodoxies still wait for their deliverance from the bonds of scepticism, that the actual is to be discriminated from the fantastic by the old test, namely, its comparative stupidity, and that we may still create our universe about any ...
— Devil-Worship in France - or The Question of Lucifer • Arthur Edward Waite

... chance of pulling the doctor's leg, and Mackintosh spent hours proving that the things which the padre says he saw could not possibly have happened I should not like to call any padre a liar; but some of the Rev. Tim's stories were rather tall, and the doctor's scepticism always goaded him to fresh ...
— Our Casualty And Other Stories - 1918 • James Owen Hannay, AKA George A. Birmingham

... Mrs. Hale's was the affability of a gentlewoman and the obligation of her position. To this was added the slight languor of the cultivated American wife, whose health has been affected by the birth of her first child, and whose views of marriage and maternity were slightly tinged with gentle scepticism. She was sincerely attached to her husband, "who dominated the household" like the rest of his "women folk," with the faint consciousness of that division of service which renders the position of the sultan of a seraglio at once so prominent and so precarious. ...
— Snow-Bound at Eagle's • Bret Harte

... thing not Built upon, or defensible by Reason: In consequence of which Opinion, the weakest attaques made against it, must needs render such Persons (at the least) wavering in their Belief of it; Whence those Precepts of Vertue, which they have receiv'd as bottom'd thereon, are, in a Time wherein Scepticism and Vice, pass for Wit and Gallantry, necessarily brought under the suspicion of having no solid Foundation; and the recommenders thereof, either of Ignorance, ...
— Occasional Thoughts in Reference to a Vertuous or Christian life • Lady Damaris Masham

... [Footnote 46: The scepticism of Voltaire (Essai sur l'Histoire Generale, c. 88) is ready on this, as on every occasion, to reject a popular tale, and to diminish the magnitude of vice and virtue; and on most occasions his ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon

... which follows no severe rule. The men of the sea understand each other very well in their view of earthly things, for simplicity is a good counsellor and isolation not a bad educator. A turn of mind composed of innocence and scepticism is common to them all, with the addition of an unexpected insight into motives, as of disinterested lookers-on at a game. Mr Powell took me aside to say, "I like the ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad

... that the Pope was an antichrist, which was afterwards an important article of the Huguenot Church. He was also a forerunner of the Reformation by his tract on the Freedom of the Will. This man, who displayed so conspicuously the resentful and iconoclastic spirit, the religious scepticism, the moral indifference, the aversion for the papal sovereignty, the contempt for the laws and politics of feudalism, the hope and expectation of a mighty change, was an official in the ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton

... character as Lady Gourlay was, had she lived longer and been subjected to the same trials. Throughout the whole work, however, I trust that I have succeeded in the purity and loftiness of the moral, which was to show the pernicious effects of infidelity and scepticism, striving to sustain and justify an insane ambition; or, in a ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton

... years since, an Italian nobleman (a Count Ginnasi of Ravenna), visiting at Florence, was brought to his house without previous introduction, by an intimate friend. The Count professed to have great mesmeric and clairvoyant faculties, and declared, in reply to Mr. Browning's avowed scepticism, that he would undertake to convince him somehow or other of his powers. He then asked Mr. Browning whether he had anything about him then and there, which he could hand to him, and which was in any ...
— Life and Letters of Robert Browning • Mrs. Sutherland Orr

... of the misery caused by an enemy more redoubtable still. Arbois, though so charming to look at, is far from being a little Eden. It is eminently a Catholic place; atheism and immorality abound; bigotry among the women, scepticism among the men, a looseness in domestic morality among all classes characterize the population, whilst we need no information on the subject of dissipation generally. The numbers of cafes and cabarets speak volumes. There is, of course, in this townling, of ...
— Holidays in Eastern France • Matilda Betham-Edwards

... tumbler without a blink, shook his head, and poured himself another. In spite of his scepticism I thought ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White

... Court. Perhaps the good lady was a trifle sore at never having been invited there herself. One never knows. At any rate, her attitude was chilling. So as regarded the incident in the Banqueting Hall he preserved entire silence. Her scepticism was ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour

... philosopher. "Sir, give me leave to tell you that no solid proof has ever been advanced of the existence of ideas: they are a mere fiction and hypothesis. Nay, sir, 'hence arises that scepticism which disgraces our philosophy of the mind.' Ideas!—Findlater, you are ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... emotion swept through me as I recalled the child-like innocence of Bertha and compared it with the critical scepticism of this superior woman. "It only goes to show," I thought, "what such a system can do to destroy a woman's faith in the very existence ...
— City of Endless Night • Milo Hastings

... which superstition or fancy had peopled Olympus. The Athenian had an innate love of the pure and true, which made him intuitively reject fables, and which, amongst his countrymen, exposed him to the charge of scepticism. Lycidas could laugh with Aristophanes at legends of gods and demigods, whom their very priests represented as having more than the common infirmities and vices of mortal men. Had Lycidas reared an altar, it would have been like that which was seen two centuries ...
— Hebrew Heroes - A Tale Founded on Jewish History • AKA A.L.O.E. A.L.O.E., Charlotte Maria Tucker

... if you should say it aloud. What do you care for O'm? If you wanted to get the Pundit to look at his religion fairly, you must first depolarise this and all similar words for him. The argument for and against new translations of the Bible really turns on this. Scepticism is afraid to trust its truths in depolarised words, and so cries out against a new translation. I think, myself, if every idea our Book contains could be shelled out of its old symbol and put into a new, clean, unmagnetic ...
— The Nervous Child • Hector Charles Cameron

... known. The crowning wonder of her career came when she consented to enter the special laboratories of the universities of Genoa and Naples. It is in the writings of Morselli, Professor of Psychology at Genoa, and in the reports of Bottazzi, head of the Department of Physics at Naples, that scepticism, such as my own, is met and conquered. I defy Miller or any man of open mind to read the detailed story of these marvellous experiments and deny the existence of the basic phenomena produced by ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland

... that evening, she found herself looking at him with wonder, and with a sort of scepticism about what her visitor had said. He seemed so full of life; it was impossible to think of him as being likely, or even able, to die. But she had made up her mind to open the subject to him, to force something from him, and to learn about this visit to the doctor ...
— Quisante • Anthony Hope

... this voyage of Verrazzano, and evidence, mainly negative in kind, has been adduced to prove the story of it a fabrication; but the difficulties of incredulity appear greater than those of belief, and no ordinary degree of scepticism is required to reject the evidence that the ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.

... pursuing the higher part of his education, for which he must leave home, can that be done best in a denominational or non-denominational College? But one answer can be given to this question. The religious and moral principles, feelings, and habits of youth are paramount. Scepticism and partisanship may sneer at them as "sectarian," but religion and conscience will hold them as supreme. If the parent has the right to secure the religious instruction and oversight of his son at home, in connection with ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson

... year, as aeroplane constructors and pilots have continued at their tasks, overcoming technical difficulties and personal risks, the interest of ordinary people has grown perceptibly. Even before the war—which has done so much to focus attention on flying—the attitude of scepticism and apathy had been greatly changed. When the London Aerodrome at Hendon was established, there were shrewd men in the city, men who are ordinarily very sound in their conclusions, who declared the public would never ...
— Learning to Fly - A Practical Manual for Beginners • Claude Grahame-White

... abrogated, either for nations or for individuals. Moral and religious law has social and economic consequences, and though the perplexed distribution of earthly good and ill often bewilders faith and emboldens scepticism, there still is visible in human affairs a drift towards recompensing in the world the righteous ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... these are sinned against, and vanish very soon, at so early a date in the history of the individual that perhaps he does not recollect that he ever possessed them; and since, like other first principles, they are but very partially capable of proof, a general scepticism prevails both as to their existence and their truth. The Greeks, partly from the vivacity of their intellect, partly from their passion for the beautiful, lost these celestial adumbrations sooner than other nations. When ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman

... influence of that temper still lay a generation ahead; and the next piece of import comes from a mind which, though perhaps the most powerful of all which have applied themselves to political philosophy in England, was, from its very scepticism, incapable of constructive effort. David Hume was thirty-one years of age when he published (1742) the first series of his essays; and his Treatise of Human Nature which had fallen "dead-born from the press" was in some sort compensated by the success of the new work. The second part, entitled ...
— Political Thought in England from Locke to Bentham • Harold J. Laski

... Crit., i, 44. "There was much genius in the world, before there were learning or arts to refine it."—Blair's Rhet., p. 391. "Such a Writer can have little else to do, but to new model the Paradoxes of ancient Scepticism."—Brown's Estimate, i, 102. "Our ideas of them being nothing else but a collection of the ordinary qualities observed in them."—Duncan's Logic, p. 25. "A non-ens or a negative can neither give pleasure nor ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown

... Wigglesworth," replied I, after a moment's pause, for the abruptness of the question had somewhat startled me—"to be quite sincere with you, I care little or nothing about a stone for my own grave, and am somewhat inclined to scepticism as to the propriety of erecting monuments at all over the dust that once was human. The weight of these heavy marbles, though unfelt by the dead corpse or the enfranchised soul, presses drearily upon the spirit of the survivor and ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... was speaking seriously now. Muller felt that this was none of the whining cant people in authority among the Boers find it desirable to adopt. It was what he thought, and it chilled Muller in spite of his pretended scepticism, as the sincere belief of an intellectual man, however opposite to our own, is apt to chill us into doubt of ourselves and our opinions. For a moment his slumbering superstition awoke, and he felt half afraid. Between him and that bright future of blood and ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard

... is pious? In the world of to-day, however, it is a kind of courage to dare to show one's piety outwardly before a world of scepticism and indifference. I should like to defend ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai

... of the whole Church, Roman Catholicism produced Protestantism, which proclaimed the right of private judgment and consequently became split up into innumerable sects. The dry, logical spirit which was thus fostered created a purely intellectual, one-sided philosophy, which must end in pure scepticism, by blinding men to those great truths which lie above the sphere of reasoning and logic. The Graeco-Slavonic world, on the contrary, having accepted Christianity not from Rome, but from Byzantium, received ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace

... an intellectual point of view this way of thinking must be classed as scepticism. "Contingency forbids any inevitable history, and conclusions are absurd. Nothing in Hegel has kept the planet from being blown to pieces." Obviously the mystical "security," the "apodal sufficiency" yielded by the anaesthetic revelation, are very different moods of ...
— Memories and Studies • William James

... enjoy the favour of our middle classes, those who best represent their rather narrow ideas, their somewhat prescribed views, their rather superficial scepticism, and their at times somewhat excessive egoism, display profound alarm at this new power which they see growing; and to combat the disorder in men's minds they are addressing despairing appeals to those moral forces of the ...
— The Crowd • Gustave le Bon

... cloud; and everybody knows how portentous that sight is, and how these broad rays, whether they light upon the Scilly Isles or upon the tombs of crusaders in cathedrals, always shake the very foundations of scepticism and lead to jokes ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf

... of the first half of the seventeenth century, which had been crushed by the Restoration, were exchanged for a state of apathy that led to self-seeking in politics and to scepticism in religion. There was a strong profession of morality in words, but in conduct the most open immorality prevailed. Virtue was commended in the bulk of the churches, while Christianity, which gives a new life and aim to virtue, was practically ignored, and ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis

... that, now comes around. Have I never seen the Medium before? No. Then I should pay him a visit. Wants to talk with me about my past and future. Has much to say; and so on. Do I not go often into a building where many persons work at chemistry? Am I not sceptical?—rather. Wants to cure my scepticism, and so on, ad nauseam. Me is tired, me wants go. Again the jerks, the rubbing of the eyes, and the Indian maid is once ...
— Preliminary Report of the Commission Appointed by the University • The Seybert Commission

... circumstances connected with the physical laws of matter. But I am rather inclined to hold, with another class of inquirers, that the origin of such marvels must be looked for in the mind of the seers; although I do not go the length of their scepticism, and deny the actual existence of the ghostly show, as a real and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 331, September 13, 1828 • Various

... turn, and there was a whisper of words. Some of the audience half rose, some on the outskirts of the gathering stole quietly away—the lesser chiefs were amongst these—and others, sitting stolidly on, assumed a blandness and a scepticism of demeanour calculated to meet the ...
— The Keepers of the King's Peace • Edgar Wallace

... became a very sick young man. He did not care if there were forty dances in the Valley that night. His head was splitting, his stomach was in a turmoil. He told Jerry to go ahead with Honey, and if he felt better after a while he would follow. Jerry at first was inclined to scepticism, and accused Bud of crawfishing at the last minute. But within ten minutes Bud had convinced him so completely that Jerry insisted upon staying with him. By then Bud was too sick to care what was being done, or who did ...
— Cow-Country • B. M. Bower

... the convictions that authority is the soundest basis of belief; that merit attaches to a readiness to believe; that the doubting disposition is a bad one, and scepticism a sin; that when good authority has pronounced what is to be believed, and faith has accepted it, reason has no further duty. There are many excellent persons who yet hold by these principles, and it is not my ...
— On the Advisableness of Improving Natural Knowledge • Thomas H. Huxley

... that the idea of infidelity—not heresy, but infidelity—was quite a familiar one; and that, side by side with the theology of Aquinas and Bonaventura, there was working among those who influenced fashion and opinion, among the great men, and the men to whom learning was a profession, a spirit of scepticism and irreligion almost monstrous for its time, which found its countenance in Frederick's refined and enlightened court. The genius of the great doctors might have kept in safety the Latin schools, but not the free and home thoughts which ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... classical learning, bringing streams of thought from old Greek and Latin fountains, caused a sudden expansion. It was like the discovery of an unsuspected and greater world, with a body of new truth, which threw the old into contemptuous disuse. A spirit of doubt, scepticism, and denial, was engendered. They comprehended now why Abelard had claimed the "supremacy of reason over faith," and why Italian poets smiled at dreams of "immortality." Then, too, the new culture compelled respect for infidel and for Jew. Was it not from their impious hands, that this new knowledge ...
— The Evolution of an Empire • Mary Parmele

... extending more widely. Unseen and unknown influences, marvellous correspondences, invisible bonds, some kind of mysterious magnetism, are, on the one hand, proclaimed as undoubted facts, and denied on the other with irony and scepticism, and yet who can say that after a while there will not be some astonishing revelations breaking in in the midst of us all when we least expect it? In the midst of so much ignorance it seems easy to lay a ...
— The Man-Wolf and Other Tales • Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian

... world, or of matter. How ever much the understanding may be satisfied of the truth of the proposition by the arguments of Berkeley and others, we no sooner go out into actual life, than we become convinced, in spite of our previous scepticism or unbelief, of the real existence of the table, the chair, and the objects around us, and of the permanence and reality of the persons, both body and mind, with whom we have intercourse. If we were not, we should soon become indifferent to their pleasure ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin

... everything.... Real liberty, absolute and immense!"[80] And this passionate love of liberty, which was his misfortune in life, since it deprived him of the comfort of any faith, refused him any refuge for his thoughts, robbed him of peace, and even of the soft pillow of scepticism—this "real liberty" formed the unique originality and grandeur ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland

... their pretended art, nor made any thing of it. The principle was now discovered; "and, of course," he said, if a man can keep it up for five minutes, what's to hinder him from doing so for five months?" "Certainly, nothing that I can think of," was the reply of my sister, whose scepticism, in fact, had not settled upon the five months, but altogether upon the five minutes. The apparatus for spinning him, however, perhaps from its complexity, would not work—a fact evidently owing to the stupidity of the gardener. On reconsidering the subject, ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey

... Medizin", Berlin, 1856.) upheld the unity of human nature, the inseparability of body and spirit. In later years at Berlin, where he was more occupied with political work and sociology (especially after 1866), he abandoned the positive monistic position for one of agnosticism and scepticism, and made concessions to the dualistic dogma of a spiritual world apart ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others

... death. It is the most unexciting contest you can imagine. It takes place in an impalpable greyness, with nothing underfoot, with nothing around, without spectators, without clamour, without glory, without the great desire of victory, without the great fear of defeat, in a sickly atmosphere of tepid scepticism, without much belief in your own right, and still less in that of your adversary. If such is the form of ultimate wisdom, then life is a greater riddle than some of us think it to be. I was within a hair's breadth of the last opportunity ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad

... be observed that for the purposes of this discussion we are on 'dogmatic' ground,—ground, I mean, which leaves systematic philosophical scepticism altogether out of account. The postulate that there is truth, and that it is the destiny of our minds to attain it, we are deliberately resolving to make, though the sceptic will not make it. We part company with him, therefore, absolutely, at this point. But the ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James

... the Church, this epidemic of scepticism is a subject of grave alarm. Unbelief seems to them, as to Mr. Moody, the worst of sins; and they consider the only proper thing to do with it, is to follow the advice of the Bishop of London, some years ago, and fling doubt away as you would a loaded shell. They apparently ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various

... Victoire, of Honorius, and of Rupert in another and a scientific age; nor was it unopposed: in the place of the foreign scholasticism formerly so repugnant to its doctrines, those of Schelling were opposed by a reaction of the superficial mock-enlightenment and sophistical scepticism predominant in the foregoing century, more particularly of the sympathy with France, which had been rendered more than ever powerful in Germany by the forcible suppression of patriotism. Abstract philosophy, despising nature and history, mocking ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks

... not, even at that time of day, inevitably immaculate. Freedom from parental supervision and the American climate went to the lad's head. He passed through a phase of commonplace but secret vice, emerging there-from with an unblemished social reputation; a blank scepticism in matters religious, combined with bitter animosity against the Deity whom he declared non-existent; and a fiercely driving ambition, not so much for wealth in itself, as for that control ever the destinies of men, and even of nations, with which wealth under modern conditions ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet

... case. The rapidity and violence with which change followed change in the affairs of France towards the close of the last century had taken away the reproach of inconsistency, unfixed the principles of public men, and produced in many minds a general scepticism and ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... a Man went into one of these thinking Engines, but he came wiser out than he was before; and I am persuaded, it would be a more effectual Cure to our Deism, Atheism, Scepticism, and all other Scisms, than ever the Italian's Engine, for Curing the Gout by cutting ...
— The Consolidator • Daniel Defoe

... speak favourably of W.'s health, but indeed he has not done common justice to Dr. Beddoes's kind prescriptions. I saw his countenance darken, and all his hopes vanish, when he saw the "prescriptions"—his "scepticism" concerning medicines! nay, it is not enough "scepticism"! Yet, now that peas and beans are over, I have hopes that he will in good earnest make a fair and full trial. I rejoice with ...
— Biographia Epistolaris, Volume 1. • Coleridge, ed. Turnbull

... absurdities and a middle condition of uneasy scepticism; which last, however unpleasant and unsatisfactory, was obviously the only justifiable state of mind ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley

... fictioneers; if I were to try to account for this, I would trace the cause to the same disposition of mind that led me to despise all artificial modes of stimulus. The fancies of other men roused my scepticism; my own, founded always on experience, and never going beyond the province of the possible, seemed to me to possess a reality sufficient to satisfy the conditions of my deluded judgment. It had been fortunate for me had I been less exclusive ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various

... through Peter, was admitted no longer. Hence, as Cardinal Manning most truly observes: "The old forms of religious thought are now passing away in England. The rejection of the Divine Voice has let in the flood of opinion; and opinion has generated scepticism; and scepticism has brought on contentions without end. What seemed so solid once, is disintegrated. It is dissolving by the internal action of the principle from which it sprung. The critical unbelief of dogma has now reached to the foundation ...
— The Purpose of the Papacy • John S. Vaughan

... cherish regret for the loss of Shakespeare's autograph papers and of his familiar correspondence. But the absence of such documentary material can excite scepticism of the received tradition only in those who are ignorant of the fate that invariably befell the original manuscripts and correspondence of Elizabethan and Jacobean poets and dramatists. Save for a few fragments of small literary moment, no play of the era in its writer's autograph escaped early ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee

... see her was ridiculously slight evidence whereon to damn so ancient and picturesque a legend. He thought the same himself, for that night at dinner—he came in late for dinner—he maintained the credit of the story with fierce conviction against Mr. Vansittart Merceron's scepticism. ...
— Comedies of Courtship • Anthony Hope

... the mountain, and that day she was stricken fruitful by the lightning. You are not the father of Cheschapah." He dealt Pounded Meat a blow, and the old man fell. But the council sat still until the sound of Cheschapah's galloping horse died away. They were ready now to risk everything. Their scepticism was conquered. ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister

... the time, Hume undertook to write a History of England, which, with all its errors and faults, still ranks among the best efforts of English historians. Like the French philosophers, Hume was an infidel, and his scepticism appears in his writings; but, unlike them—for they were stanch reformers in government as well as infidels in faith—he who was an infidel was also an aristocrat in sentiment, and a consistent Tory his life long. In his history, with all the artifices of a philosopher, he takes the Jacobite ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee

... Young, J. R.—Modern Scepticism, viewed in relation to Modern Science; more especially in reference to the doctrines of Colenso, Huxley, Lyell, and ...
— Life of Charles Darwin • G. T. (George Thomas) Bettany

... by the Trappist was of those innumerable mendicant societies which France supported at that time. Though its rules were ostensibly most austere, this monastery was rich and devoted to pleasure. In that age of scepticism the small number of the monks was entirely out of proportion to the wealth of the establishment which had been founded for them; and the friars who roamed about the vast monasteries in the most remote parts of the provinces led the easiest and idlest lives they had ever known, in the ...
— Mauprat • George Sand

... to be expected that Archibald would be able to modify the terms of the bargain in his own case: was he, then, prepared to pay the price? Every human being, probably, is called upon to give a more or less direct answer to this question at some epoch of their lives: and were it not for curiosity and scepticism, and an unwillingness to profit by the experience of others, very likely that answer might be more often favorable to virtue than it actually is. Archibald did not hesitate long. Whether he decided to disbelieve in any danger; whether ...
— Archibald Malmaison • Julian Hawthorne

... between the classical and mediaeval epochs may be found in the fact that the former produced, whereas the latter failed to produce, a few great thinkers in each generation who were imbued with that scepticism which is the foundation of the investigating spirit; who thought for themselves and supplied more or less rational explanations of observed phenomena. Could we eliminate the work of some score or so of classical observers and thinkers, the classical ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams

... born of vivid, reiterate experience, the loquacity of logic, the formulae of pure intellect break like waves upon a rock—and with as little result. The intensity and persistence of Roy's experience simply left no room for insidious whispers of doubt; nor could he have tolerated such scepticism in others, natural though it might be, if one had not ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver

... much of her father's spirit as to sorrow bitterly for this apostasy, and Butler joined in her regret. "Yet any religion, however imperfect," he said, "was better than cold scepticism, or the hurrying din of dissipation, which fills the ears of worldlings, until they care ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... present have not been kind to Rowe either as editor or as critic; but all eighteenth-century editors accepted many of his emendations, and the biographical material that he and Betterton assembled remained the basis of all accounts of the dramatist until the scepticism and scholarship of Steevens and Malone proved most of it to be merely dubious tradition. Johnson, indeed, spoke generously of the edition. In the Life of Rowe he said that as an editor Howe "has done more than he promised; and that, without the pomp of notes ...
— Some Account of the Life of Mr. William Shakespear (1709) • Nicholas Rowe

... ill-used and misunderstood, the beautiful, unattainable mother. If Miss Carew had seen into the reveries of her pupil at such a moment, she would hardly have believed how they alternated with the coldest fits of doubt and scepticism. Molly was dealing with a self-made ideal that she needed to satisfy the hunger of her nature for love and worship. But it had no foundations, no support, and it was apt to vanish with a terrible completeness. Then she would feel quite alone and horribly ashamed; she would ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward

... I have, according to our arrangement, addressed it to you, my dear Mr. McArdle, and I leave it to your discretion to delete, alter, or do what you like with it. From the assurance of Professor Challenger's manner—and in spite of the continued scepticism of Professor Summerlee—I have no doubt that our leader will make good his statement, and that we are really on the eve of ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle

... they are conscious of a want of that book-learned culture which the practice of their skilled crafts cannot bestow, and this makes them suspicious of those who have it and diffident in conversation with them. But underneath this reticence and willingness to hear dwells a quiet scepticism which has no docility in it, and is not to be persuaded out of its way by any eloquence or any emotion. Missionary influences, like those of church and chapel, make but little impression on these quiet-eyed men. The tendency is towards a scientific rather ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt

... wrote. "He says there's no woman," he could hear Mrs. Newsome report, in capitals almost of newspaper size, to Mrs. Pocock; and he could focus in Mrs. Pocock the response of the reader of the journal. He could see in the younger lady's face the earnestness of her attention and catch the full scepticism of her but slightly delayed "What is there then?" Just so he could again as little miss the mother's clear decision: "There's plenty of disposition, no doubt, to pretend there isn't." Strether ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James

... then), the intellect has been in a state of systematic insurrection against "le coeur." The metaphysicians and literati (lettres), after helping to pull down the old religion and social order, are rootedly hostile to the construction of the new, and desiring only to prolong the existing scepticism and intellectual anarchy, which secure to them a cheap social ascendancy, without the labour of earning it by solid scientific preparation. The scientific class, from whom better might have been expected, are, if possible, worse. Void of enlarged views, despising all that is too ...
— Auguste Comte and Positivism • John-Stuart Mill

... none of the senses at my command reveal them to me and I do not believe that the sense you call sight exists. I think you suffer from hallucinations. We might sympathize very sincerely with the poor man who is thus afflicted, but his scepticism, reasonings and objections and sneers notwithstanding we would be obliged to maintain that we ...
— The Rosicrucian Mysteries • Max Heindel

... I had no easy task to perform; for however clear might be my internal conviction of the groundlessness of his fears, and however strong my scepticism respecting the reality of what he had described, I nevertheless felt that his impression to the contrary, and his humility and terror resulting from it, might be made available as no mean engines in the work of his conversion from profligacy, and of his restoration to decent habits, and ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 4 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

... to lead him away from the last subject. He perceived that the door between his favourite brother's soul and his own was closed, and that knocking would only cause it to be bolted and barred. It might be true, as Mr. Audley had told him, that Edgar's was not so much real scepticism as the talk of the day, and the regarding the doubts of deeper thinkers as a dispensation from all irksome claims; but this was poor solace, while his brother rattled on: 'My dear Blunderbore, the hasty-pudding on which you characteristically breakfast is a delusion as to ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge

... of view from which he habitually apprehends phenomena is an enforced cognizance of matter-of-fact sequence. The result, so far as concerts the workman's life of faith, is a proclivity to undevout scepticism. ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen

... interpreted it as awed. "Our young vicar," he said to his wife, "thinks much. He is serious and contemplative beyond his years. He is not a man of many and vain words." To which his wife replied only by a sniff of scepticism. ...
— The Benefactress • Elizabeth Beauchamp

... to Troy, but for the remonstrances of Pandarus, who asked if they had visited Sarpedon only to fetch fire? At last, at the end of a week, they returned to Troy; Troilus hoping to find Cressida again in the city, Pandarus entertaining a scepticism which he concealed from his friend. The morning after their return, Troilus was impatient till he had gone to the palace of Cressida; but when he found her doors all closed, "well nigh for sorrow adown he ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer

... Stoics had introduced. That was really carrying on one side of Platonism and not the least important. It is true indeed that the Academy appears to us at this distance of time mainly as a school of scepticism, but we must remember that its scepticism was directed entirely to the sensible world, as to which the attitude of Plato himself was not fundamentally different. The real sceptics always refused to admit that the Academics were sceptics in the proper sense of the word, and it is possible ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various

... still be certain that they differ very slightly from what the original must have been. It is of course possible to hold that the story of the dream is pure fiction, and that the lines which Baeda translated were not Caedmon's at all. But there is really nothing to justify this extreme of scepticism. As the hymn is said to have been Caedmon's first essay in verse, its lack of poetic merit is rather an argument for its genuineness than against it. Whether Baeda's narrative be historical or not—and it involves nothing either ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various

... superficial scepticism, and what wonder? Have you read the story of France? Ah, yes, the faith is coming back. This last twenty years, mon ami, a change has come about. There is a new force working. People are beginning to ...
— All for a Scrap of Paper - A Romance of the Present War • Joseph Hocking

... one was Monsieur Boulingrin, Secretary of State for the Treasury. Those who ask how it was possible that he should not believe in them since he had seen them are unaware of the lengths to which scepticism can go in an argumentative mind. Nourished on Lucretius, imbued with the doctrines of Epicurus and Gassendi, he often provoked Monsieur de La Rochecoupee by the display of a cold disbelief ...
— The Story Of The Duchess Of Cicogne And Of Monsieur De Boulingrin - 1920 • Anatole France

... Comment. in epist. ad Galatas, ii. 3. His assertion has, however, met with much scepticism in modern times, and it must be admitted that he was not ...
— The Romanization of Roman Britain • F. Haverfield

... aright."—P. 320. He may have made the enquiry without using the information—a practice not inconsistent in such a biographer. For instance, when he assumes, that in the portrait of Beattie, the figures of Scepticism, Sophistry, and Infidelity, represent Hume, Voltaire, and Gibbon; remarking, that they have survived the "insult of Reynolds." An enquiry from Northcote ought to have led him to conclude otherwise, for Northcote, who had the best means of knowing, says, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various

... time after he received my note. He was not, take him altogether, over-scrupulous. Sir Patrick Colquhoun told me that once when he was at Constantinople, Mr. Borrow came there, and gave it out that he was a marvellous Oriental scholar. But there was great scepticism on this subject at the Legation, and one day at the table-d'hote, where the great writer and divers young diplomatists dined, two who were seated on either side of Borrow began to talk in Arabic, speaking to him, the ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland

... this is the final answer to your scepticism, an answer none the less true because you cannot receive it: The Lord keepeth the souls of His saints. Have you not seen men thinning out a great tree, cutting off some of its noblest branches and marring its splendid symmetry? And very likely you ...
— The Threshold Grace • Percy C. Ainsworth

... spiritual ingredient, composed, when one comes to analyse it, of two chemical elements; of what might be called aesthetic egoism and of what we know as philosophic scepticism. Let us deal with the former of ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys

... conversation turned again to the treatment of the Belgian people by the Germans; to the unnecessary and brutal murders of noncombatants; to the frightful rapine and pillage of the early months of the war. Her Majesty could not understand the scepticism of America on this point. I suggested that it was difficult to say what any army would do when it found itself in a ...
— Kings, Queens And Pawns - An American Woman at the Front • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... your scepticism, Charles, for I'm told that the apparition from the pit—the White Lady, as she is called—has favoured you with a special appearance," said Colwyn, in a ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees

... what wonder if I said to myself, 'This man cannot believe what he is saying?'" (p. 26). Such has been Mr. Kingsley's state of mind till lately, but now he considers that I am possessed with a spirit of "almost boundless silliness," of "simple credulity, the child of scepticism," of "absurdity" (p. 41), of a "self-deception which has become a sort of frantic honesty" (p. 26). And as to his fundamental reason for this change, he tells us, he really does not know what it is (p. 44). However, let the ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman

... minimum, affected by this law.—The vital truths of the incarnation and immortality independent of these miracles.—These truths now placed on higher ground in a truer conception of the supernatural.—The true supernatural is the spiritual, not the miraculous.—Scepticism bred from the contrary view.—The miracle-narratives, while less evidential for religion, not unimportant for history.—Psychical research a needed auxiliary for the scientific critic ...
— Miracles and Supernatural Religion • James Morris Whiton

... are not quite convinced of its reality. We know that it is decorative, and that a certain pleasure flows from it; but we are sceptical of its significance in the life of the race, of its deep necessity in the development of that life, and of its supreme educational value. And our scepticism, it must be frankly said, like most scepticism, grows out of our ignorance. True art has nothing in common with the popular conception of its nature and uses. Instead of being decorative, it is organic; when men arrive at ...
— Books and Culture • Hamilton Wright Mabie

... came in. It was not long before he arrived. He began by sending Rachel out of the room—and then he told the rest of us that Lady Verinder was no more. Serious persons, in search of proofs of hardened scepticism, may be interested in hearing that he showed no signs of remorse when he looked ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins

... heart clung to earth, and to earthly strife; and his uneasiness must at last have become deplorably wretched, since he could consent to pick up stale arguments against Christianity, and leave a piece of patchwork, made up of the shreds of other men's scepticism, as his especial legacy to posterity, in proof of the masterly independence ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various

... impressed him, in spite of his better judgment. An heroic soul going forth with an unfeigned stoicism to meet its fate? Or an unhappy man, striving to hide a shivering consciousness from himself and others, with an assumption of philosophical scepticism? Ah! who was Graham, that he should judge or weigh the secrets of another man's heart at such an hour as this? He left the bedside, and went back once ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter

... is frequently consulted by the suffering and oppressed; frequently called upon to answer that question in which the scepticism of the humble and the ignorant ordinarily begins: 'Why am I suffering? Why am I oppressed? Is this the justice of Providence? Has the Great Father that benign pity, that watchful care for His children, which you preachers tell us?' Ever intent on deducing examples from the lives to which ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... of Angola cats, Dresden china, Turkish chibouques, maccaroni, and Lord Byron, with whose poems this lady seemed sufficiently familiar. I improved the occasion, as the right thing to do, when talking with ladies about Byron, to find fault with his impiety, his blasphemous scepticism, his cutting sarcasm, and the unhappy frivolity which defaces the works of the man, who, with all his faults, was undoubtedly the greatest poet the ...
— Notes in North Africa - Being a Guide to the Sportsman and Tourist in Algeria and Tunisia • W. G. Windham

... is impregnable," Herbert Spencer has well discerned, "religion has never adequately realized. In the devoutest faith, as we habitually see it, there lies hidden an innermost core of scepticism; and it is this scepticism which causes that dread of inquiry displayed by religion when face to ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond

... this end. I use this reasoning only on the supposition, that the earth has had a beginning. I am sure I shall read your conjectures on this subject with great pleasure, though I bespeak beforehand, a right to indulge my natural incredulity and scepticism. The pain in which I write, awakens me here from my reverie, and obliges me to conclude with compliments to Mrs. Thomson, and assurances to yourself of the esteem and affection with which I am sincerely, Dear Sir, your friend ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... advocated by eloquent writers, would not fail to attract many zealous votaries, for they would relieve men from the painful necessity of renouncing preconceived opinions. Incredible as such scepticism may appear, it has been rivalled by many systems of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and among others by that of the learned Falloppio, who, as we have seen (p. 33), regarded the tusks of fossil elephants as earthly concretions, and ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various

... destructive properties of the instrument, but the command was given in such an earnest and authoritative fashion that to have refused compliance would only have caused offence. Probably, too, Edmund would not try the experiment if he expressed his scepticism, and he was curious to see it, so he retreated to the doorway to ...
— Heiress of Haddon • William E. Doubleday

... persuaded the day will come, when it will be seen that the despair of scepticism has been misplaced, not only with regard to natural knowledge, but also in relation to the great problems of the intellectual and moral world. It is true, that Plato failed to solve these problems; but his failure may be easily ...
— A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory • Albert Taylor Bledsoe

... and interludes of fancy and narrative, it will be found that the volume arrays its force of argument against two of the assumptions alike of modern and of ancient scepticism; namely, that a revelation from God to men through the agency of a book is an unreasonable tenet of belief; and that it is impossible that a miracle should occur, and impossible that its occurrence should be authenticated. There is a vigorous ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers

... classical taste, for wit and brilliance of dialogue, will be disconcerted by childishness or fierce passion. It is an abrupt literature, but spontaneous and sincere, which has not been spoilt by formalism and scepticism, but which has not acquired, from a purely technical point of view, the perfection of the French. Having remained inarticulate during the two centuries of classical education, it has lost nothing and gained nothing ...
— Belgium - From the Roman Invasion to the Present Day • Emile Cammaerts

... that I adulate the people: Without me, there are demagogues enough,[496] And infidels, to pull down every steeple, And set up in their stead some proper stuff. Whether they may sow scepticism to reap Hell, As is the Christian dogma rather rough, I do not know;—I wish men to be free As much from mobs as kings—from you ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron

... historian she caused a sepulchral chamber to be constructed for herself in the walls of Babylon, above one of the principal gates. So far as the terms of the inscription are concerned he may have been hoaxed by the native dragomans, but there is nothing to rouse our scepticism in the fact of a tomb having been contrived in the thickness of the wall. At Sinkara Loftus discovered two corbel-vaulted tombs imbedded in a mass of masonry which had apparently served as basement to a temple ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot

... tongue Of lawyers can turn right to wrong; And language, by your skill made pliant, Can save an undeserving client. Is it the fee directs the sense To injure injured innocence? Or can you, with a double face Like Janus's, mistate a case? Is scepticism your profession, And justice absent from your session? And is, e'en so, the bar supplied, Where eloquence takes ...
— Fables of John Gay - (Somewhat Altered) • John Gay

... to his own words knows them to be but 'words, words, words.' Instead of trying to be the hero of his own history, he seeks to be the spectator of his own tragedy. He disbelieves in everything, including himself, and yet his doubt helps him not, as it comes not from scepticism but from a ...
— De Profundis • Oscar Wilde

... unmoved by her scepticism. "I can't tell you anything else," he said simply. "You couldn't have any idea I crawled up here for ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman

... fallacy. Its general admission would tend, in a great measure, to produce the very evils it appears to lament. What could be its effect, but to check the ardour of investigation, to extinguish the zeal of philanthropy, to freeze the current of enterprising hope, to bury in the torpor of scepticism and in the stagnation of despair, every better faculty of the human mind, which will necessarily become retrograde ...
— Headlong Hall • Thomas Love Peacock

... so. As it is, however, the arguments of the present chapter will proceed as if the whole legendary history of Ireland and Scotland, so far as it relates to the migrations by which the islands were originally peopled by the Gaels, were a blank—the reasons for the scepticism being withheld for the present. But only for the present. In the seventh chapter they will be given as fully ...
— The Ethnology of the British Islands • Robert Gordon Latham

... in divinations, and Stephen also declined, for another reason, namely that the result might prove to be different, which, he held, would be depressing. The other Zulus oscillated between belief and scepticism, as do the unstable who set to work to study the evidences of Christianity. But Sammy did not oscillate, he literally howled, and prepared the food which poured in upon us so badly that I had to turn on Hans to do the cooking, for however little appetite we might have, it ...
— Allan and the Holy Flower • H. Rider Haggard

... he shivered, as it were, in this chilling blast of scepticism. Then shaking his head with sublime confidence—"There is always a demand!" he cried; "that ineffable type is one of the eternal needs of man's heart; but pious souls long for it in silence, almost in shame. Let ...
— The Madonna of the Future • Henry James

... reprint of this most interesting work, and that the first edition of 1473 should be collated with MSS. The translation by Mr. Inglis might be revised, and made to accompany the Latin text. Let us hope, however, that his notes, if they be permitted again to appear, may be purified from scepticism and profaneness. ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 43, Saturday, August 24, 1850 • Various

... doubt that both the actions and the writings of contemporaries justified a considerable amount of scepticism regarding the purity of Platonic affections. The words and lives of many illustrious persons gave colour to what Segni stated in his History of Florence, and what Savonarola found it necessary to urge upon the people from ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds

... some of them, I am ashamed to say, I don't understand." Probably she would have partly agreed with some one's criticism of them, "De l'esprit, encore de l'esprit, et toujours de l'esprit—trop d'esprit!" [10] No doubt, La Rochefoucauld has done his own reputation wrong by the bluster of his scepticism and also by the fact that he sometimes wraps his thoughts up in such a blaze of epigram that we are disconcerted to find, when we analyze them, that they are commonplaces. Contemporaries seemed to have smiled at the excessive subtlety into which their long conversations led ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse

... and range) had begun to soften the stern and fiery spirit which had hitherto sported with the dangerous elements of social revolution. And while this change was working, before its feverish agitation subsided into that Kantism which is the antipodes of scepticism, it was natural that, to the energy which had asserted, denounced, and dogmatized, should succeed the reaction of despondency and distrust. Vehement indignation at "the solemn plausibilities" of the world pervades ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various

... loaded to the muzzle with will. The very scullions have genius.' A steady course of Balzac reduces our living friends to shadows, and our acquaintances to the shadows of shades. His characters have a kind of fervent fiery-coloured existence. They dominate us, and defy scepticism. One of the greatest tragedies of my life is the death of Lucien de Rubempre. It is a grief from which I have never been able completely to rid myself. It haunts me in my moments of pleasure. I remember it when I laugh. But Balzac is no more a realist ...
— Intentions • Oscar Wilde

... Apostle John reports that a soldier pierced Christ's side with a spear. But the authors of the three synoptic Gospels do not mention this wounding with the spear. Neither do they allude to the other story told by John, as to the scepticism of Thomas, and his putting his hand into the wound made by the spear. It is curious that John is the only one to tell both stories: so curious that both stories look ...
— God and my Neighbour • Robert Blatchford

... Left alone he felt despairing. The futility of the precautions he had taken, the inanity of all reasoning, of all logic, plunged him into the scepticism he had been combatting for so ...
— The Idol of Paris • Sarah Bernhardt

... fluctuation during the entire interview, at one moment carried away by the contagious confidence of the doctor's tone, and impressed by his calm, clear, scientific explanations and the exhibition of the electrical apparatus, and the next moment reacting into utter scepticism and contemptuous impatience with himself for even listening to such a preposterous piece of imposition. By the time he had walked half a block, the sights and sounds of the busy street, with their practical and ...
— Dr. Heidenhoff's Process • Edward Bellamy

... soon as the idea of the good disappears. It becomes then a blind submission to mere law. It is an outward constraint, not an inward inspiration. Scepticism follows. "The world is empty, the heart is dead surely," is its language. Nihilism arrives sooner or later. God is nothing; man is nothing; life is nothing; death is nothing; eternity is nothing. Hence the profound sadness of Buddhism. To its eye all existence is evil, ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke

... sphere of its application to the Christian religion, free thought is generally used to denote three different systems; viz. Protestantism, scepticism, and unbelief. Its application to the first of these is unfair.(9) It is true that all three agree in resisting the dogmatism of any earthly authority; but Protestantism reposes implicitly on what it believes to be the divine authority of the inspired writers of the books of holy ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar

... 6.51 Scepticism is not irrefutable, but obviously nonsensical, when it tries to raise doubts where no questions can be asked. For doubt can exist only where a question exists, a question only where an answer exists, and an answer only where something can ...
— Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus • Ludwig Wittgenstein

... of autonomy for Poland is, to say the least of it, received with scepticism by the American Press which is comparatively well informed on the Polish question. The words of the virtuoso Paderewski, who is working here in the interests of the Polish sufferers through the war: ...
— My Three Years in America • Johann Heinrich Andreas Hermann Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff



Words linked to "Scepticism" :   unbelief, sceptical, agnosticism, disbelief, skepticism



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