"Speculative" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... pursued with the view of acquiring a sounder judgment, and quicker and more accurate perceptions of the every-day details of business and duty. That knowledge is worse than useless which does not lead to wisdom. To women, more especially, as their lives can never be so entirely speculative as those of a few learned men may justifiably be, the great object in study is the manner in which they can best bring to bear each acquisition of knowledge upon the improvement of their own character or that of others. The manner in which they may most effectually promote the ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... passage of the Abbe. It means nothing or it means ill; and in any case it shows the great difference between speculative and practical knowledge. A treaty according to the Abbe's language would have neither duration nor affection; it might have lasted to the end of the war, and then expired with it.—But France, by acting in a style superior ...
— A Letter Addressed to the Abbe Raynal, on the Affairs of North America, in Which the Mistakes in the Abbe's Account of the Revolution of America Are Corrected and Cleared Up • Thomas Paine
... my colored brother Ahmah-de-Bellah, and his kinsman Abdulmomen, lost no chance of lecturing me about my soul! We kidnapped the Africans all day and spouted Islamism all night! Our religion, however, was more speculative than practical. It was much more important, they thought, that we should embrace the faith of their peculiar theology, than that we should trouble ourselves about human rights that interfered with profits and pockets. We spared ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... Ronald condescended to approach the speculative side of the subject, with the assistance of his subordinate. "If what you said just now means anything," he resumed, "it means that you suspect the reason why Farnaby has left my service. ...
— The Fallen Leaves • Wilkie Collins
... deploring the risks of their present speculative mode of life, was far from imagining that signs of the foul future so much dreaded were actually apparent to Ethelberta at the time the lament was spoken. Hence the daughter's uncommon sensitiveness to prophecy. It was as if a dead-reckoner poring over ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... good, he was able to go away and read, and think about things. He liked to read books about the primitive man, books of anthropology, and also works of speculative philosophy. His mind was very active. But it was like a bubble floating in the darkness. At any moment it might burst and leave him in chaos. He would not die. He knew that. He would go on living, but the meaning would have collapsed out of him, his divine reason would be gone. ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... digestive faculty of the liver, and he divides it into four species, to-wit, leucoflantia, yposarcha, alchitis and tympanitis, each of which has its special and appropriate treatment. In the dreary waste of speculative discussion it is cheering, however, to observe Gilbert's positive recognition of the sphere of percussion indicated ...
— Gilbertus Anglicus - Medicine of the Thirteenth Century • Henry Ebenezer Handerson
... the inlet must be defined. Some years before he had been known as a timber-cruiser—that is to say, a man who "locates," during his wanderings through forests primeval, belts of timber which will be likely to allure the speculative lumberman. Barker, therefore, had discovered the inlet which bore his name, and in consideration of his services, and with a due sense of his physical and mental qualifications, he had been appointed boss of the camp by the real owners—a syndicate of ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... exchange rate policies if it wants to keep inflation under control. Some foreign investors remain concerned about the viability of Brazil's exchange rate policy because of the country's fiscal and current account deficits. The government thus has to contend with the possibility of capital flight or a speculative attack that could draw down foreign reserves to a critical level ...
— The 1998 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... faith of Islam. But science and free thought then, as now, in Islam, depended almost solely on the tastes of the wealthy and the favour of the monarch. The ignorant fanaticism of the multitude viewed speculative studies with deep dislike and distrust, and deemed any one a Zendik (infidel) who did not rest content with the natural science of the Koran. These smouldering hatreds burst into open flame about the year 1195. Averroes was accused of heretical opinions and pursuits, stripped of his honours, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... too extensive to be fully comprehended by speculative reason, experience is the guide which a wise man will follow with the least distrust, and it is no trivial recommendation of the present method, that it has been so long pursued without any formidable inconvenience ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 10. - Parlimentary Debates I. • Samuel Johnson
... used to lament that certain writers of the first class, who were capable of exalting virtue, and of putting vice out of countenance, too generally employed themselves in works of imagination only, upon subjects merely speculative, disinteresting and unedifying, from which no useful moral ...
— Clarissa Harlowe, Volume 9 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... suggested by a visit to Haddon Hall," is very pleasing. The style here is suggestive, and judiciously so; he generalizes, and we are pleased to imagine. We see elegant figures walking under shade of trees, clear refreshing green shade; the composition is graceful, and fit for the speculative or enamoured loiterers. Perhaps the foreground is too ambitious—too much worked to effect. If this be done for the sake of contrast, it is a mistake of the proper effect of, and proper place for, contrast. In such a scene of ease and gentleness, all contrast is far better avoided; it always ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... three times wearing around, providing they didn't come to mending before that," mused the "Pet," with a speculative look in her blue eyes, but with a quiver of the dimples that evoked another paroxysm of laughter from her audience. "But I say, Sadie," she went on with the next breath, "Miss Minturn is a downright sweet-looking girl, and I'll wager a- -a darning ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... would make it all right if he wrote to his mother about her at once. He reflected how he could word the letter to convey that this girl was the most glorious and desirable being on earth without lapsing into the exuberance of phrase which was the one thing that made her turn on him the speculative gaze, not so much expressive of contempt as admitting that the word contempt had certainly passed through her mind, which she habitually turned on ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... claimed, at once satisfies and transcends the operations of the human intellect. Most non-theological modern minds are, however, somewhat suspicious of the doctrine of the Trinity; it seems rather too speculative and too remote from ordinary ways of thinking to possess much real value. But this is quite a mistake. We cannot dispense with the doctrine of the Trinity, for it, or something like it, is implied in the very structure of the mind. It belongs ...
— The New Theology • R. J. Campbell
... barrister, Governmental official, or workingman variety of him. Not that Mr. Basnett, giving his days to commerce and his spare time to social reform, would long carry about him any trace of his possibilities of completeness; but, for the moment, in his youth and ardor, still speculative, still uncramped, one might imagine him the citizen of a nobler state than ours. Katharine turned over her small stock of information, and wondered what their society might be going to attempt. Then she remembered that she was hindering their business, and rose, still thinking of this ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... they'll thin out these cheeky brutes. Fancy that two-year-old pig clattering his tusks at me, planted there in the path with his mane on end!—You know it mortifies me, Kathleen—it certainly does. One of these fine days some facetious pig will send me shinning up a tree!" He grew madder at the speculative indignity. "By ginger! I'm going to have a shooting party before the snow flies," he muttered, walking forward between Kathleen and his sister. "Keep your eyes out ahead; we may jump another at any time, as the wind is all right. And if we do, let him ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... inherent that even before this war speculative minds had pointed out the direction to which these inventions pointed, but now, after more than three-quarters of a year of war, it is possible to approach this question, no longer as something as yet fantastically outside ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... constantly secured from day to day under the immediate supervision of the Government. Besides, the only effect of such a discrimination would be to drive such banks to Georgetown, Alexandria, or some other speculative site outside the city or District. This city has just been consecrated to freedom by Congress, and it is hoped that, in commencing its new career, no discrimination will be made against it. Indeed, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... sets a man on a level with lofty heights, consigned though they were socially to the lowest level. Fate's injustice was a strong bond between them. And then, by different ways, following each his own bent of mind, they had attained to poesy. Lucien, destined for the highest speculative fields of natural science, was aiming with hot enthusiasm at fame through literature; while David, with that meditative temperament which inclines to poetry, was drawn by his tastes ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... all sorts of rumors are in circulation, and Free Gold stock, which has been sold during the past week as high as a dollar forty, found few takers at par when Change closed. There has been a considerable speculative movement in the stock, and the speculators are beginning to wonder if there is a screw loose in the ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... earnest persons, I would only say, that a question of this kind is not to be shelved upon theoretical or speculative grounds. You may remember the story of the Sophist who demonstrated to Diogenes in the most complete and satisfactory manner that he could not walk; that, in fact, all motion was an impossibility; ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... the arts was a master theory of Richard Wagner, which he attempted to put into practice. Walter Pater in his essay on The School of Giorgione has dwelt upon the same theme, declaring music the archetype of the arts. In his Essays Speculative John Addington Symonds said some pertinent things on this subject. Camille Mauclair in his Idees Vivantes proposes in all seriousness a scheme for the fusion of the seven arts, though he deplored Wagner's efforts to reach a solution. ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... yesterday. Therefore neither lapse of time nor multiplicity of trials could ever quench in Athanasius the pure spirit of hope which glows in his youthful work. Slight as our sketch of it has been, it will be enough to show his combination of religious intensity with a speculative insight and a breadth of view reminding us of Origen. If he fails to reach the mystery of sinlessness in man, and is therefore not quite free from a Sabellianising view of the Lord's humanity as a mere vesture of his divinity, he at least rises far above the barren logic of the Arians. ...
— The Arian Controversy • H. M. Gwatkin
... production of that aristocratic atmosphere which separated them from newly-made people. But [9] in the young Marius, the very absence from those venerable usages of all definite history and dogmatic interpretation, had already awakened much speculative activity; and to-day, starting from the actual details of the divine service, some very lively surmises, though scarcely distinct enough to be thoughts, were moving backwards and forwards in his mind, as the stirring ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater
... production of the end, nay using such as are of a directly opposite nature, these men presume to talk to us of impossibilities! We may rather contend that they furnish a fresh proof of the soundness of our reasonings. We lay it down as a fundamental position, that speculative knowledge alone, that mere superficial cursory considerations, will be of no avail. Nothing is to be done without the diligent continued use of the appointed method. They themselves afford an instance of the truth of our assertions; and while they supply no argument against the efficacy of the ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... Absurdities in speculative opinion are commonly considered as innocent things; and we are told every day that they are not worth refuting. So far as opinions are sure to rest merely in speculation, and cannot in any degree ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... think, that there's a better living, for the really successful artist, in varieties than there is on the stage. There's more certainty—less of a speculative, dubious element, such as ye canna escape when there's a play involved. The best and most famous actors in the world canna keep a play frae being a failure if the public does not tak' to it. But in the halls a good turn's a good turn, and it can be used longer ...
— Between You and Me • Sir Harry Lauder
... men ever saw,—has gained greater victories on sea and land than any power in the world,—has erected the smallest spot to the most imperial ascendency recorded in history. The administrative triumphs of her intellect are as conspicuous as her imaginative and her speculative triumphs. ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... of the mass of mankind will answer these questions without a moment's hesitation. Healthy humanity, finding itself hard pressed to escape from real sin and degradation, will leave the brooding over speculative pollution to the cynics and the 'righteous overmuch' who, disagreeing in everything else, unite in blind insensibility to the nobleness of the visible world, and in inability to appreciate the grandeur of the ...
— On the Relations of Man to the Lower Animals • Thomas H. Huxley
... and Billy, slowly, thoughtfully, mounted his wheel and rode around the station, with the air of one who enjoys the scenery. The third time he rounded the curve by the freight agent the man looked up with a speculative squint and eyed the boy. The fourth time he called out, straightening up and laying down ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... of a speculative frame of mind and chose to take as the basis for a calculation the increase in tourists between 1855, when the ten pioneers started for Paris, and the number "personally conducted" over land and sea to-day, and then glance forward at what the future will be if this ratio ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory
... two men had just seated themselves, one an elderly person who seemed somewhat feeble, and the other a tall, sharp-faced individual who eyed his companion in a shrewd, speculative manner. ...
— Dave Porter in the Gold Fields - The Search for the Landslide Mine • Edward Stratemeyer
... which were often as speculative and suggestive as he claimed, the late John Addington Symonds called attention to three successive phases of criticism, pointing out that the critics had first set up as judges, delivering opinions from the bench and never hesitating ...
— Inquiries and Opinions • Brander Matthews
... did it? Well, anyway, I should worry about you and your clothes," stated the other. He took a step onward, then halted; and now the gleam of speculative gain was in his eye. "Say, if I was willin' to sell—not sayin' I would be, but if I was—wot would you be willin' to give for an overcoat like ...
— The Life of the Party • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... I murmured, recalling my dear mother's lessons; "all at one fell swoop; not to mention five hundred yoke of oxen, carried off by the Sabeans, then a leading firm of speculative cattle-dealers!" ...
— An African Millionaire - Episodes in the Life of the Illustrious Colonel Clay • Grant Allen
... mind, in order to become conscious of the truth, which (to quote Spinoza) "remoto errore nuda remanet." He has still much to learn, and he should learn it as a man from man. I should like to propose to him first to go to Bonn. He would there find that most deeply thoughtful and most original of speculative minds among our living theologians, the Hamann of this century, my dear friend R. Rothe; also a noble philosopher and teacher of ethics, Brandis; an honest master of exegesis, Bleek; and young minds would soon attach themselves to him. In ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... simple and practical, the other sensitive and speculative, did not move in the same atmosphere, and could not understand one another. Ambrose was in the condition of excitement and bewilderment produced by the first stirrings of the Reformation upon enthusiastic minds. He had studied the Vulgate, made out something of the Greek Testament, read all fragments ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... designated as "Disciples of Christ," or "Christians." I procured their literature and made a thorough study of their position. I naturally found myself in harmony with their teaching. I had myself come to see the folly of enforcing upon all believers the speculative theology of the creeds, and the weakness and waste that result from a divided church. My experience revealed to me the relative value of human wisdom and God's wisdom as found in his Book. The thought of preaching Christ rather than theology, and of restoring the apostolic church ...
— To Infidelity and Back • Henry F. Lutz
... at least an indication that the public had not forgotten that Browning was a poet. Here in Florence, although the hermit life was happy, new friends—the gift of England—added to its happiness. Frederick Tennyson, the Laureate's brother, and himself a true poet in his degree, "a dreamy, shy, speculative man," simple withal and truthful, had married an Italian wife and was settled for a time in Florence. To him Browning became attached with genuine affection. Mrs Browning was a student of the writings of Swedenborg, and she ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... which are alone adequate to shape character and fit man for the highest conceivable destiny—fellowship with, and likeness to, the Divine Being in whose image he has been made. This, of course, may be said to be the aim of all theology. The theologian must not be content to discuss merely speculative problems about God and man. He must seek above {2} all things to bring the truths of revelation to bear upon human practice. All knowledge has its practical implicate. The dogma which cannot be translated into duty is apt ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander
... satisfied were they with their present situation, that they refused an offer which was made them of being conveyed to their native country. A very important instruction may be derived from the preceding narrative. It will serve to explain, better than a thousand conjectures of speculative reasoners, how the detached parts of the earth, and, in particular, how the islands of the South Sea, though lying remote from any inhabited continent, or from each other, may have originally been peopled. Similar adventures have occurred ...
— Narrative of the Voyages Round The World, • A. Kippis
... Sutra-Pitaka. It means a group or collection and hence can be used to denote either a body of men or a collection of treatises. These Nikayas are also not the same as the four schools (Vaibhashikas, etc.), mentioned above, which were speculative. Similarly in Europe a Presbyterian may be a Calvinist, but Presbyterianism has reference to Church government ...
— Hinduism And Buddhism, Volume II. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... this speculative man felt in the mood for fancies, for presently he was staring at one of the constellations, and saying to himself, "Why not? Well, why not? Granted force can travel through ether,—whatever ether is—why ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard
... the wildest and most unstable character, and the early eighteenth century saw many losses and constant fluctuations in the realm of finance. The most famous instance of this was the "South Sea Bubble," a speculative scheme by which a regulated company, the South Sea Company, was chartered in 1719 to carry on the slave-trade to the West Indies and whale-fishing, and incidentally to loan money to the government. ...
— An Introduction to the Industrial and Social History of England • Edward Potts Cheyney
... awaiting Baker's return, her gaze fell upon a solitary figure, trudging along the white, snake-like road, far down among the foothills—the figure of a priest in his long black robe. He was the first man she had seen on the road, and she watched him with curious, speculative eyes. ...
— Castle Craneycrow • George Barr McCutcheon
... editors. It had been discovered that he was a stylist, with meat under his style. The Northern Review, after publishing "The Cradle of Beauty," had written him for half a dozen similar essays, which would have been supplied out of the heap, had not Burton's Magazine, in a speculative mood, offered him five hundred dollars each for five essays. He wrote back that he would supply the demand, but at a thousand dollars an essay. He remembered that all these manuscripts had been refused by the very ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... psychologists that prepared the outline of a course for this purpose deserves attention as a contribution to the pedagogy of the subject. They proposed a course on "Human Action," to be free from questions of a speculative or theoretical nature and concentrated on matters relevant to military practice and the military uses of psychology. The aim was to enlist the student's practical concern at the very outset, and to give him the psychological ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... representative of the race in the way of practical executive intellect. It is poor praise to put him into another order of men, with Plato or with Paul. Their greatness was of another kind. We cannot speak of degrees. He is the exponent of creative force in political history—not of speculative ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... Fairfield, however, Mallston may not have seen his desperate position, especially with summer and harvest wages coming. Just now he was out of a job, having finished a ditching contract, and his black, speculative eyes looked ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... driven the only profitable commerce of Tuscany from its only port: it is not this sovereign, a far more able statesman than any of the Medici in whose chair he sits, it is not the philosopher Carletti, more ably speculative than Galileo, more profoundly politic than Machiavel, that call upon us so loudly to give the same happy proofs of the same good faith to the republic always the ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... speculative English, who were out of his reach, made a judicious estimate of the weak points of his system, and found the Russians ready to act upon their suggestions. They it was who had been endeavouring for the last three years to ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... also sold to Horace Fairchild, who had been associated with it as partner since 1831, and a Mr. Toucey, who formed a partnership under the name of Fairchild & Co. Barnum had lost considerable money in this store; he was too speculative for ordinary trade, too ready, also to give credit, and his ledger was full of unpaid accounts when he ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... combines the faculty of acute and searching criticism with a style that is singularly clear, incisive, and exact. His wide knowledge of English literature, and the close study which he has given to the history of English opinions and controversies, speculative, political, and economical, have enabled him to survey an extensive field, to trace the lines of origin and development, to disentangle complicated ideas, and to summarise conclusions in a masterly manner. Nearly twenty-five years have passed since he published his work on English Thought ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... they got the hypership built soon enough, it would start a second, sound boom that would cushion the crash of the present speculative market when it ...
— The Cosmic Computer • Henry Beam Piper
... but still not more than 4000 feet above the level of the sea, and 1000 feet lower than the top of the western ridge we had already crossed; yet, instead of lofty snow-clad mountains appearing to verify the conjectures of the speculative, we had extensive plains, over which one may travel a month without seeing any thing higher than an ant-hill or a tree. I was not then aware that any one else had discovered the elevated trough form of ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... air of interest altered indefinably. Inspecting his chafing prisoner now with narrowed, speculative eyes which glinted keenly, he fell presently to whistling softly, laughed and with tantalizing abruptness fell silent again. Immobile and subtle now as his silent companion, he stared curiously at the other's fastidiously pointed beard, at the dark eyes and tightly compressed ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... but the simple form of the adjective."—Wright's Gram., p. 49. "But when I talk of Reasoning, I do not intend any other, but such as is suited to the Child's Capacity."—Locke, on Ed., p. 129. "Pronouns have no other use in language, but to represent nouns."—Jamieson's Rhet., p 83. "The speculative relied no farther on their own judgment, but to choose a leader, whom they implicitly followed."—Kames, El. of Crit., Vol. i, p. xxv. "Unaccommodated man is no more but such a poor, bare, forked animal as thou art."—Beaut. ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... exactitude which leads one to suppose Donatello reproduced all the peculiarities of his model. It has been said that Michelozzo helped Donatello on the ground that certain details reappear on the Aragazzi monument. The argument is speculative, and would perhaps gain by being inverted,—by pointing out that when making the Aragazzi figures, Michelozzo, the lesser man, was influenced by ...
— Donatello • David Lindsay, Earl of Crawford
... favourable opportunity presented itself, he felt desirous of having a peep at the snowy Kilimandjaro Mountain, of which the Rev. Mr Rebmann, who first discovered it, had sent home reports, and which had excited such angry and unseemly contests amongst our usually sedate though speculative carpet-geographers in England as rendered ...
— What Led To The Discovery of the Source Of The Nile • John Hanning Speke
... limits, and these were not imposed by time or necessity, but by the unyielding will of his own prejudices. As his virtues were massive, so were his errors grievous. He ventured to grasp the great speculative themes of existence with a mind that was neither profound nor suggestive. He swam with all the wondrous ease of an athlete through the billows and across the currents and counter-currents of elegant literature, of politics, of ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... When he piled us all in with our grips, he put me in the seat beside him, whether I liked it or not. I was fool enough to tell him I loved to travel fast. What do you think he said? Well, he eyed me in a rather cool and speculative way and said, with a smile, 'Miss, I reckon anything you love an' want bad will be coming to you out here!' I didn't know whether it was delightful candor or impudence. Then he said to all of us: 'Shore you had ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... industry and commerce and amassed wealth. "Not only are they crowding all the meaner trades [in the first and second centuries of the Christian era], from which Roman pride shrank contemptuously, but, by industry, shrewdness, and speculative daring, they are becoming great capitalists and landowners on a senatorial scale."[787] "The plebeian, saturated with Roman prejudice, looking for support to the granaries of the state or the dole of the wealthy patron, turned with disdain from the occupations which are ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... He disliked much all speculative desponding considerations, which tended to discourage men from diligence and exertion. He was in this like Dr. Shaw, the great traveller[361], who Mr. Daines Barrington[362] told me, used to say, 'I hate a cui bono man.' Upon being asked by a friend[363] what he should think of a man who ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... council, or decide causes, or are in some command, the last more especially, for to command is peculiar to magistrates. But to speak truth, this question is of no great consequence, nor is it the province of the judges to decide between those who dispute about words; it may indeed be an object of speculative inquiry; but to inquire what officers are necessary in a state, and how many, and what, though not most necessary, may yet be advantageous in a well-established government, is a much more useful employment, and this with respect to all states ...
— Politics - A Treatise on Government • Aristotle
... spectacular: a 10% average in the 1960s, a 5% average in the 1970s, and a 4% average in the 1980s. Growth slowed markedly in the 1990s largely because of the aftereffects of overinvestment during the late 1980s and contractionary domestic policies intended to wring speculative excesses from the stock and real estate markets. Government efforts to revive economic growth have met little success and were further hampered in late 2000 by the slowing of the US and Asian economies. The crowding of habitable land area and the aging of the population are two major long-run ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... the benefits of the rotation of crops, Liebig propounded a very ingenious theory, but one which was largely of a speculative nature, and which has since been shown to be unfounded on any scientific basis. It was to the effect that one kind of crop excreted matters which were especially favourable to another kind of crop. He did not say whether he considered such ...
— Manures and the principles of manuring • Charles Morton Aikman
... should go too, and hurried into my boots so as to show decision taken, in the necessary interviews. They came of course - the interviews - and I explained what I was going to do at huge length, and stuck to my guns. I am glad to say the natives, with their usual (purely speculative) sense of justice highly approved the step after reflection. Meanwhile off went S. and I with the three CORPORA DELICTI; and a good job I went! Once, when our circus began to kick, we thought all was up; but we got them down all sound in wind ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a child is not known to be a human being till some time after its birth. And this is not uttered by some speculative philosopher in his closet, but by a medical practitioner on his daily rounds, tools in hand, as it were, to carry out his theory and break the skulls of any and all luckless babes that may come in his way in the exercise ...
— Moral Principles and Medical Practice - The Basis of Medical Jurisprudence • Charles Coppens
... of people cannot be traced in the gray light of an uncertain dawn. The vaguer and more complex these movements on account of their historical remoteness, the wider their probable range. The question as to the geographical origin of the Aryan linguistic family of peoples brings us to speculative sources, more or less scientifically based, reaching from Scandinavia and Lithuania to the Hindu Kush Mountains and northern Africa.[236] The sum total of all these conjectural cradles, amounting to a large ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... the adult powers and faculties of the woman? when the lessons of experience fell from the lips of infancy? and when the wisdom or the passions of maturity I found hourly gleaming from its full and speculative eye? When, I say, all this became evident to my appalled senses, when I could no longer hide it from my soul, nor throw it off from those perceptions which trembled to receive it, is it to be wondered at that suspicions, of a nature fearful and exciting, crept in upon my spirit, or ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... to others). Yet in the Ignatian letters there is not the faintest aquaintance with the man or his teaching. Valentinus also taught at Rome (c. A. D. 140-60), and his strange theories about AEons and Ogdoads, about spiritual, psychical, and material men, or any other fantasy of his speculative mythology, were not thought beneath the criticism of an Irenaeus, a Clement of Alexandria and a Tertullian. Yet no hint is there in the Seven Epistles that these thoughts were familiar to the writer. At ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... Co. was the name of the brokerage firm that always handled Jadwin's rare speculative ventures. Converse was dead long since, but the firm still retained its original name. The house was as old and as well established as any on the Board of Trade. It had a reputation for conservatism, and was known more as a Bear than a Bull concern. It was immensely wealthy and immensely important. ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... philosopher could give himself up to the study of causes and their finality, that faculty being allotted to the mental activity; he could even, without giving the scientist cause for complaint, make, or admit, speculative theories regarding the end and aim of art, provided that the scientific part of the system was neither ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... possibility of a concrete evolution theory nearer, and in the early seventeenth century we find evidences of a new spirit—in the embryology of Harvey and the classifications of Ray. Besides sober naturalists there were speculative dreamers in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries who had at least got beyond static formulae, but, as Professor Osborn points out (op. cit. page 87.), "it is a very striking fact, that the basis of our modern methods of studying the Evolution ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... man of quiet tastes. It was a marvellous discovery, of course, quite marvellous—but—He had already become the proprietor of several acres of scorched, discredited property near Hickleybrow, at a price of nearly 90 an acre, and at times he was disposed to think this as serious a consequence of speculative chemistry as any unambitious man, could wish. Of course he was Famous—terribly Famous. More than satisfying, altogether more than satisfying, was the ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells
... quality, as well as in quantity, unparalleled since the days of Colbert and Seignelay, near a century before. Concomitant with this had been a singular progress in the theory of naval evolutions, and of their handmaid, naval signalling, among French officers; an advance to which the lucid, speculative, character of the national genius greatly contributed. Although they as yet lacked practice, and were numerically too few, the French officers were well equipped by mental resources, by instruction and reflection, to handle large ...
— Types of Naval Officers - Drawn from the History of the British Navy • A. T. Mahan
... scholar has been protected by his definitely directed life from the temptations of this speculative equity; and I believe his writings to contain the truest expression yet given in England of the feelings with which a Christian gentleman of sense and learning should regard the art produced in ancient days, by the dawn of the ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... subjected to it Perhaps it will be discovered to hold universally, that wherever the appearance of revenge characterizes an act of retributive justice, a feeling of the same principle hardens the breast of the culprit, besides influencing the speculative judgments of those who witness it But it were foolish to expect, that either one or other will avow the existence of so dangerous a motive. The only excuse that offers itself in. behalf of Captain Cook's conduct on this occasion, is stated in what he immediately mentions ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... confided the fact that he had put all his savings into the stock of the present company at its greatly depressed present value. The company was not paying dividends; he had bought at forty. His air of financial success, of shrewd speculative insight impressed them all. Miss M'Gann evidently knew all about this; she smiled as if the world were a pretty ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... of children filed out, every head turning for a last unpleasingly speculative look at the outlaw. Then Miss Spence closed the door into the cloakroom and that into the big hall, and came and sat at her desk, near Penrod. The tramping of feet outside, the shrill calls and shouting and the changing voices of the older boys ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... self-seeking man, the beautiful simplicity and clear transparency of Truth remains unaltered and undimmed, and the unselfish heart enters into and partakes of its shining radiance. Not by weaving complex theories, not by building up speculative philosophies is Truth realized; but by weaving the web of inward purity, by building up the Temple of a ...
— The Way of Peace • James Allen
... province both indulgences and dispensations, as they in their discretion should think proper and reasonable; and no person, to whom such liberty should be granted, was to be molested, punished, or called in question for any differences in speculative opinions with respect to religion; so that all persons, of what denomination soever, had liberty to enjoy their own judgments and consciences in religious concerns, provided they disturbed not the civil order and peace of ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 1 • Alexander Hewatt
... perfect the bird comparison, Mr. Taggett, after keeping the public in suspense for six days and nights, abruptly flew away, with all the little shreds and straws of evidence he had picked up, to build his speculative ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... themselves Republicans, was Alexander Hamilton. I believe I may say that all the political sympathies of George Washington were with the same school. Washington, however, was rather a man of feeling and of action than of theoretical policy or speculative opinion. When the Constitution was written Jefferson was in France, having been sent thither as minister from the United States, and he therefore was debarred from concerning himself personally in the matter. His views, however, were represented by Madison; and it is now ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope
... of the school [12] to which he belongs; he abounds in felicities of impulse. Yet who can help feeling that his style is regular because the matter he deals with is the somewhat uncontentious, even, limited soul, of an age not imaginative, and unambitious in its speculative flight? Even in Steele himself we may observe with what sureness of instinct the men of that age turned aside at the contact of anything likely to make them, in ...
— Essays from 'The Guardian' • Walter Horatio Pater
... custom in the opportunities of his leisure to take some friends with him into the country, where, instead of amusing themselves with idle sports or feasts, their diversions were wholly speculative, tending to improve the mind and enlarge the understanding. In this manner he now spent five days at his Tusculan villa in discussing with his friends the several questions just mentioned. For, after employing the mornings in declaiming and rhetorical exercises, they used to retire ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... settled in 1790 by adventurers from Havre, Bordeaux, Nantes, La Rochelle, and other French cities. The colony was promoted in France by Joel Barlow, an Ananias even among land sharks, representing the Scioto Land Company, or Companie du Scioto, one of the numerous speculative concerns that early sought to capitalize credulity and European ignorance of the West. The Company had, in fact, no title to the lands, and the wretched colonists found themselves stranded in a wilderness for whose conquest they were unsuited. Of the colonists ...
— Our Foreigners - A Chronicle of Americans in the Making • Samuel P. Orth
... govern this most intricate question the author has boldly defined and authoritatively arranged. The chapters which he has written on the more involved features of the subject, as sex and the relative influence of parents, should go far toward setting at rest the wildly speculative views cherished with reference to these questions. The striking originality in the treatment of the subject is no less conspicuous than the superb order and regular sequence of thought from the beginning to the end of the book. The book is intended to meet ...
— Clovers and How to Grow Them • Thomas Shaw
... to a discussion of the speculative value of Confederate money; but in a little while the conversation returned to ...
— The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and - Selected Essays • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... nature discussed, I have ever read. You know how I admired your former essays, but this seems to me far grander. I like all the part after page xxvi better than the first part, probably because newer to me. I dare say you will demur to this, for I think every author likes the most speculative parts of his own productions. How superior your essay is to the famous one of Brown (here will be sneer 1st from you). You have made all your conclusions so admirably clear, that it would be no use at all to be a botanist (sneer No. 2). By ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... bursts upon him, David's is the final conquest of his own ardent intellect, under the impulse of a great human task which lifts it beyond its experience, and calls out all its powers. David is occupied with no speculative question, but with the practical problem of saving a ruined soul; and neither logical ingenuity nor divine suggestion, but the inherent spiritual significance of the situation, urges his thought along the lonely ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... Jackson with speculative ardor. Saunderson narrowed his eyes, as he looked judiciously at the broker. He flicked the ash from ...
— Trusia - A Princess of Krovitch • Davis Brinton
... not my intention to dwell long upon speculative theory, but I must observe, that if any tradition is to be received with confidence it must proceed from nations, or tribes, who have long been stationary. That the northern continent of America was first peopled from ...
— Monsieur Violet • Frederick Marryat
... of our reason, but our magistrate, rather; and mechanically to obey his commands, however strange they may be, remains our only moral duty. Conceptions of criminal law have in fact played a great part in defining our relations with him. Our relations with speculative truth show the same externality. One of our duties is to know truth, and rationalist thinkers have always assumed it to be our sovereign duty. But in scholastic theism we find truth already instituted and established without our help, complete apart from ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James
... Evolution." It is but an instrument to help out the confusion of the senses, and it is conditioned by the accuracy of the sense-perceptions with which it deals. There is no appeal from experience to reason, for reason is powerless to act save on the facts of human experience. Speculative philosophy can teach us nothing. The senses and the reason are intensely practical and all, our faculties are primarily adapted to immediate purposes. Instruments such as these cannot serve to probe the nature of the infinite. But no other instruments lie within reach ...
— The Philosophy of Despair • David Starr Jordan
... that its apparent divinity supposes. Now, such is the task that we solemnly inaugurated when, starting at once with human reality and the divine hypothesis, we began to unroll the history of society in its economic institutions and speculative thoughts. ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... nothing of this kind had come into his life before. He kept shyly glancing at the girls; and, noting the speculative innocence in Greta's eyes, he smiled. They soon came to two great poplar-trees, which stood, like sentinels, one on either side of an unweeded gravel walk leading through lilac bushes to a house painted dull pink, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... of her father's life. Again she heard him telling her of the one man to whom he had entrusted her, who would make it his sole business to save her, who would protect her life with his own, heard his speculative question as to whether she knew whom he meant, recalled her own quick reply, and his answer—and ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... conception that play is not serious. Children are allowed to do just as they please. This is a mistake. Froebel has taught the true spirit and importance of play. Some people consider his explanations as being purely speculative, if not insane; but the great majority of those who have really studied child ...
— How to Add Ten Years to your Life and to Double Its Satisfactions • S. S. Curry
... phenomenon of the time than the shifting of large masses of population from the East to the West, while the war was in progress. This fact begins to indicate why there was no shortage in the agricultural output. The North suffered acutely from inflation of prices and from a speculative wildness that accompanied the inflation, but it did not suffer from a lack of those things that are produced by the soil—food, timber, metals, and coal. In addition to the reason just mentioned—the search for new occupation by Eastern ...
— Abraham Lincoln and the Union - A Chronicle of the Embattled North, Volume 29 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... witch; 2. The astrologian, star-gazing, planetary, prognosticating witch; 3. The chanting, canting, or calculating witch, who works by signs and numbers; 4. The venefical, or poisoning witch; 5. The exorcist, or conjuring witch; 6. The gastronomic witch; 7. The magical, speculative, sciential, or arted witch; ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... doubt, as much worth in himself, independently of the circumstances of time or place, as another; but he is not of so much value to us and our affections. Could our imagination take wing (with our speculative faculties) to the other side of the globe or to the ends of the universe, could our eyes behold whatever our reason teaches us to be possible, could our hands reach as far as our thoughts or wishes, ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... administrative unity, and while a fervid national spirit had been developed among the people. The contrast was one which fructified in many serious results, and among them we must rank the effect which it produced on the minds of the French lawyers. Their speculative opinions and their intellectual bias were in the strongest opposition to their interests and professional habits. With the keenest sense and the fullest recognition of those perfections of jurisprudence which consist in simplicity and uniformity, they believed, ...
— Ancient Law - Its Connection to the History of Early Society • Sir Henry James Sumner Maine
... matters respecting the Church, where heresy, which the Emperor held, or affected to hold, in great horror, appeared to him to lurk. Nor do we discover in his treatment of the Manichaeans, or Paulicians, that pity for their speculative errors, which modern times might think had been well purchased by the extent of the temporal services of these unfortunate sectaries. Alexius knew no indulgence for those who misinterpreted the mysteries of the Church, or of its doctrines; ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... then, for the political side of the 'philosophy of the century,' if we are to use this too comprehensive expression for all the products of a very complex and many-sided outburst of speculative energy. Apart from its political side, we find M. Taine's formula no less unsatisfactory for its other phases. He seems to us not to go back nearly far enough in his search for the intellectual origins, any more than for ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3) - Essay 8: France in the Eighteenth Century • John Morley
... enterprise; with it as with the other, rewards became tremendously larger; small turnovers were regarded as puny and contemptible, and operators thought in terms of pyramiding thousands of dollars where before they had been glad to strive for speculative returns of hundreds. By now Chappy Marr had won his way to the forefront of his kind. The same intelligence invoked, the same energies exercised, and in almost any proper field he would before this have been a rich man and an honored one. By his twisted code of ethics and unmorals, ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... within safe limits is surely a dangerous assumption. The principle of a fixed limit, to be broken in case of real need, but only after some ceremony has been gone through giving notice of the fact that a crisis has been reached, seems rather to be required by the psychology of speculative mankind. But even if Sir Edward's preference for bills of exchange as backing for notes has all the merits that he claims that is no reason for urging the repeal of the Bank Act to secure their use. Because the Bank Act does not forbid it: ...
— War-Time Financial Problems • Hartley Withers
... you!" It was the cure of the surgeon's knife, ruthless, radical; it was, in fact, kill or cure; she knew that. "Of course it's a gamble," she admitted, and paused, nibbling at her finger; "a gamble. But I've got to take it." She spoke of it as she might of some speculative business decision. She looked at him as if imploring comprehension, but she had to speak as she thought, with sledgehammer directness. "It takes brains to make money—I know because I've made it; but any fool can inherit it, just as any fool can accept it. I'm going to give you a ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland
... salmon," or "the melted butter," or "that glass of sherry," which are recognized as the causes for so many morning reflections. This curious circumstance suggests an interesting source of inquiry for the speculative. ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... "diggings" he was soon to desert forever. Poor, wretched, little old "diggings"! As he passed the Plaza, the St. Regis and the Gotham, he favoured the great hostelries with contemplative, calculating eyes; he even looked with speculative envy upon the mansions of the Astors, the Vanderbilts and the Huntingtons. She was born and reared in a house of vast dimensions. Even the Vanderbilt places were puny in comparison. His reflections carried him back ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... the world rather as a spectator of mankind, than as one of the species, by which means I have made myself a speculative statesman, soldier, merchant, and artisan, without ever meddling with any practical part in life. I am very well versed in the theory of a husband or a father, and can discern the errors in the economy[10], business, ...
— The De Coverley Papers - From 'The Spectator' • Joseph Addison and Others
... early part of the eighteenth century the South Sea Company was formed in England. Britain became a speculative crowd. Stock in the South Sea Company rose from 128-1/2 points in January to 550 in May, and scored 1,000 in July. Five million shares were sold at this premium. Speculation ran riot. Hundreds of companies were ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... a book called "Speculative and Moral Theology." In vol. 3, tract 23, disputation 8, sec. 5, no. 63, p. 448, are found the following sentences: "Licet procurare abortum, ne puella infametur." That doctrine is admitted, "to evade personal ...
— Awful Disclosures - Containing, Also, Many Incidents Never before Published • Maria Monk
... Works, near Glasgow, at a time when the Company had only two blast-furnaces at work. The office of accountant, which he held, precluded him from taking any part in the manufacturing operations of the concern. But being of a speculative and ingenious turn of mind, the remarkable conversions which iron underwent in the process of manufacture very shortly began to occupy his attention. The subject was much discussed by the young men about the works, and they frequently had occasion ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... brethren, and this resemblance is made still more striking by the oratorical flights or prayers with which she interrupts her argument to address her Creator. Moreover, the book is throughout, as Leslie Stephen says, "rhetorical rather than speculative." It is unmistakably the creation of a zealous partisan, and not of a calm advocate. It reads more like an extempore declamation than a deliberately written essay. Godwin says, as if in praise, that it was begun and finished within six weeks. It would have been ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... termed the positive value, and can be approximately determined by sampling or test-treatment runs. The second and the third may be termed the speculative values, and are largely a matter of judgment based on geological evidence and the industrial outlook. The fourth is a question of development, equipment, and engineering method adapted to the prospects of the enterprise, ...
— Principles of Mining - Valuation, Organization and Administration • Herbert C. Hoover
... mercenaries, could not be supposed to require more time than the text. According to this calculation, the progress of Pope may seem to have been slow; but the distance is commonly very great between actual performances and speculative possibility. It is natural to suppose, that as much as has been done to-day may be done to-morrow; but on the morrow some difficulty emerges, or some external ...
— Lives of the English Poets: Prior, Congreve, Blackmore, Pope • Samuel Johnson
... Indeed, for the nations of the world to spring, commercially speaking, at one another's throats would be suicidal even if it were possible. Mr. Sidney Webb has thrown a flood of light upon the conditions likely to prevail. For example, speculative export trade is being replaced by collective importing, bringing business more directly under the control of the consumer. This has been done by co-operative societies, by municipalities and states, in Switzerland, France, the United Kingdom, and in Germany. The Co-operative ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... cursory study of such texts as Dana's "Manual of Geology" will reveal that the development of the plants and animals through the "ages" of speculative geology does not move forward like a steadily rising flood. There is rather a series of great waves, each rising abruptly, new forms often appearing suddenly and together. The very simplest known fossils, the trilobites, of which nearly a hundred species are known in America alone, ...
— Evolution - An Investigation and a Critique • Theodore Graebner
... compares the scores of constitutions that have been engulfed in the convulsions of the Latin peoples with that of England, and points out that the latter has only been very slowly changed part by part, under the influence of immediate necessities and never of speculative reasoning. ...
— The Crowd • Gustave le Bon
... This is no speculative dream. The progress of science is daily proving it to be an actual truth; proving to us that a large proportion of diseases—how large a proportion, no man yet dare say— are preventible by science under the direction of that common justice and ...
— Sermons on National Subjects • Charles Kingsley
... Lover Pretty Woman, A Rabbi Ben Ezra Red Cotton Nightcap Country Return of the Druses, The Reverie Rudel and the Lady of Tripoli St. Martin's Summer Saisiaz, La Saul Serenade at the Villa, A Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister, A Solomon and Balkis Sordello Soul's Tragedy, A Speculative Strafford Summum Bonum Time's Revenges Toccata of Galuppi's, A Too Late Transcendentalism Two in the Campagna Two Poets of Croisic Up in a Villa—Down in the City Waring Worst of it, ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... Power, which, by its success, may invite and authorize still further encroachments,—all these are dangers to which the alleged doctrine of Toryism, whenever brought into practice, exposes its idol; and more particularly in enlightened and speculative times, when the minds of men are in quest of the right and the useful, and when a superfluity of power is one of those abuses, which they are least likely to overlook or tolerate. In such seasons, the experiment of the Tory might lead to all that he most deprecates, and the branches ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... say," Francis replied. "The financial position of the company depends entirely upon the value of a large quantity of speculative bonds, but as there was only one clerk employed, it was impossible to get at any figures. Hilditch declared that Jordan had only a small share in the business, from which he had drawn a considerable income for years, and that ...
— The Evil Shepherd • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... pretend to say that the Bibliotheca of Gesner is any thing like perfect, even as far as it goes: but, considering that the author had to work with his own materials alone, and that the degree of fame and profit attached to such a publication was purely speculative, he undoubtedly merits the thanks of posterity for having completed it even in the manner in which it has come down to us. Consider Gesner as the father of bibliography; and if, at the sale of Malvolio's busts, there be one of this great man, purchase it, good Lisardo, and place it ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... clear. It was the familiar story of wealth grasping at yet more wealth, of the man whose judgment and common sense begin to play him false, when once the intoxication of money has gone beyond a certain point. Dazzled by some first speculative successes, Sir Arthur had become before long a gambler over half the world, in Canada, the States, Egypt, Argentina. One doubtful venture supported another, and the City, no less than the gambler himself, was for a time taken in. But the downfall ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... much that is promulgated by his followers presented, it must be owned, ample scope. Romantic, indeed, as was Lord Byron's sacrifice of himself to the cause of Greece, there was in the views he took of the means of serving her not a tinge of the unsubstantial or speculative. The grand practical task of freeing her from her tyrants was his first and main object. He knew that slavery was the great bar to knowledge, and must be broken through before her light could come; that the work of the sword must ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... attitude of Canada. German propaganda had been busy, and certain sections of the Canadian public had been heard to say that they had no part with England—but that was before the war. The speculative neutral had a shock and a disappointment. Not a Canadian, man or woman, but remembered that England was "home," and home was threatened. As one man they answered ...
— Private Peat • Harold R. Peat
... system. Late hours; living beyond one's income; leaving too much to one's employees; neglect of details; no inborn love for one's calling; over-confidence in the stability of existing conditions; procrastination; speculative mania; selfishness; self-indulgence in small vices; studying ease rather than vigilance; social demoralization; thoughtless marriages; trusting one's work to others; undesirable location; unwillingness to pay the price ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... her complete want of breeding and that she was really very good to have put herself out for her so; she was a common creature and that was the end of it. I could see that Mrs. Nettlepoint's advent quickened the speculative activity of the other ladies; they watched her from the opposite side of the deck, keeping their eyes fixed on her very much as the man at the wheel kept his on the course of the ship. Mrs. Peck plainly meditated an approach, and it was from this danger ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... walks. His habit of morbid introspection had grown and become a fixed feature of his life. Even while occupied with business his secret self stood invisible at his elbow whispering, ever whispering things alien from material holdings or profit—matters unrelated to speculative ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... miles, was not going to last many hours; meantime, I set myself to work out scientifically its genesis, operation, and hidden purpose. The first and second considerations were merely matters of research and calculation; the third was largely speculative, admitting of no more definite conclusion than that the time had come when hygienic necessities required a thorough rousing and ridding-out of microbes, bacteria, and other pests too minute to be worth particularising. But I was better enlightened ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... on the bed and tucked her feet under her, and the thoughtful forefinger began to slowly trace the pattern on the bedspread, while Jane Rowland studied her with speculative spectacles. ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer
... such inquiries made on a more wholesale and systematic scale. They are no longer of a merely speculative character. We no longer regard children as the "gifts of God," flung into our helpless hands; we are beginning to realise that the responsibility is ours to see that they come into the world under the best conditions, and at the moments when their ...
— Essays in War-Time - Further Studies In The Task Of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... relation of the origin and development of the South Sea Company, of the forming and collapse of the "bubble," and of the spread of the speculative mania which manifested itself in so many other extravagant projects, makes a fitting counterpart to this historian's narrative of the rise and fall of the contemporary scheme in ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... the defendant buying this land, packing up, bidding adieu to the dear down-country home, and his toilsome journey into the woods, arrival, and purchase, and poor, hard life of toil and deprivation: here was his all. He sketched the plaintiff as a well or ill-to-do gentleman, of a speculative turn of mind, whose eye coveted the rich bottom-lands of the defendant; and finding him helpless and poor, searched out the weak place in his title, hunted up obscure relatives, and procured for a song sung by themselves, ...
— Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle
... more utterly alone than Glenveigh Castle. The utter silence which Mr. Adair has created seems to wrap the place in an invisible cloak of awfulness that can be felt. Except a speculative rook or a solitary crane sailing solemnly toward the mountain top, I saw no sign of life in all the glen. Owing to the windings of the road it seemed quite a while after we sighted the top of the tower before we entered the avenue which ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall
... assured. Yet even in that a subtle danger lurks. Certain contingencies have become involved in the recital of your admittedly ingenious stories which the future unfolding of events may not always justify. For instance, the very speculative Shan Tien, casting his usual moderate limit to the skies, has accepted the Luminous Insect as a beckoning omen, and immersed himself deeply in the chances of every candidate bearing the name of Lao, Ting, Li, Tzu, Sung, Chu, Wang or Chin. Should all these fail incapably at the trials ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... elevates and exalts us in our esteem, tinging our hearts with heroism and our souls with pride, in the love and attachment of some fair and beautiful girl, there is something equally humiliating in being the object of cold and speculative calculation to a match-making family: your character studied; your pursuits watched; your tastes conned over; your very temperament inquired into; surrounded by snares; environed by practised attentions; one eye ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... proportionate to the increase of the population, viz. 6,900,000, we shall find that the average yearly income of a working- class family comes to about L94, or a weekly earnings of about 36s. This figure is of necessity a speculative one, and is probably in excess of the actual average income of a ...
— Problems of Poverty • John A. Hobson
... the men and women who have at heart the interests of rural life and the rural school. I have tried to avoid deeply speculative theories on the one hand, and distressingly practical details on the other; and have addressed myself chiefly to the intelligent individual everywhere—to the farmer and his wife, to the teachers of rural schools, to the public spirited school boards, individually and collectively, ...
— Rural Life and the Rural School • Joseph Kennedy
... political situation of Europe seems to be less threatening among its leading powers, still the uncertainty prevalent among those who are generally considered the arbiters of public affairs has had its influence in contracting the limits of speculative adventure, thereby circumscribing the general course of trade ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 711, August 17, 1889 • Various
... in all ages and countries of the world of which there is record, woman's dress signalized itself by extravagant and very often tasteless conceptions. In a country where, before the doctrine of popular sovereignty had been broached in any part of the world by the most speculative theorists, very vigorous and practical examples of democracy had been afforded to Europe; in a country where, ages before the science of political economy had been dreamed of, lessons of free trade on the largest scale had been taught ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley |
