"Doubter" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... last shall vindicate the right. Crime shall be meted with its proper pain, Motes shall be taken from the doubter's sight, And fortune's general justice rendered plain. Of honest laughter there shall be no dearth, Wit shall shake hands with humor grave and sweet, Our wisdom shall not be too wise for mirth, Nor kindred follies want a fool to greet. As sometimes ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... of the province of the New-Netherlands, when it was under the sway of Wouter Van Twiller, otherwise called the Doubter, the people of the Manhattoes were alarmed, one sultry afternoon, just about the time of the summer solstice, by a tremendous storm of thunder and lightning. The rain descended in such torrents, as absolutely to spatter up and smoke along the ground. It seemed as if the thunder ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... and turned them upon the doubter for the space of three minutes, but Holman was blissfully ignorant of the look which the angry archaeologist favoured him with. The youngster was watching the firelight upon the face of Miss Barbara Herndon, and his ...
— The White Waterfall • James Francis Dwyer
... hell-fire. For, indeed, Septimius had but given the clergyman the merest partial glimpse of his state of mind. He was not a new beginner in doubt; but, on the contrary, it seemed to him as if he had never been other than a doubter and questioner, even in his boyhood; believing nothing, although a thin veil of reverence had kept him from questioning some things. And now the new, strange thought of the sufficiency of the world for man, if man were only sufficient for that, kept ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... rocking-chair moved to and fro precisely as if some one were sitting in it, and so on. It was all unconvincing at the time, but as I look back upon it now, after years of experience, I am inclined to think part of it at least was genuine. And this brings me to say to Mrs. Quigg, and to any other doubter, that you have only to step aside into silence and shadow and wait for a moment—and the bewildering will happen, or you will imagine it to happen. I will agree to furnish from this company a medium that will astonish even our ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland
... Sometimes, to be sure, explanation is not enough. The brain paths between the associated ideas are so deeply worn that no amount of persuasion avails. It is easy for the doubter to say: "Well, that sounds very well, but my case is different. I have tried over and over again and I know." With people of this sort, an ounce of demonstration is worth a pound ...
— Outwitting Our Nerves - A Primer of Psychotherapy • Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury
... not very high. It is pitched in a tone of exaltation that is eminently unfavourable to the permanently profitable treatment of such a subject. There are in it too many of those eloquent and familiar commonplaces of orthodox history, by which the doubter tries to warm himself into belief, and the believer dreams that he is corroborating faith by reason. The assembly for whom his discourse was prepared, could hardly have endured the apparition in the midst of them of what both rigorous justice and accurate history required to have taken into ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Turgot • John Morley
... did not the city government make a piece of work of putting an end to such a scandal?" inquired a doubter in spectral visitations. ...
— Old New England Traits • Anonymous
... my troth unshaken, Though others may deceive; To give with willing pleasure, Or still with joy receive; To bring the mourner comfort, To wipe sad tears away; To help the timid doubter— This ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... which had to be carved from a broken wagon-shaft with a jack-knife before they could begin; but they achieved the baking of 324 pies between 6 A.M. and 6 P.M. that day. It is fair to state for the sake of the doubter, however, that the pie fillers, both pumpkin and apple, were all prepared and piping hot on the stove ready to be poured into the pastry as it was put into the oven, which, of ...
— The War Romance of the Salvation Army • Evangeline Booth and Grace Livingston Hill
... the learned of the schools Who measure heavenly things by rules, The sceptic, doubter, the logician, Who in all sacred things precision, Would mark the limit, fix the scope, "Art thou the Christ for whom we hope? Art thou a magian, or in thee Has the divine eye power to see?" He answered low to those ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell
... comparatively commonplace novels. The re-writing of the first volume was completed in September 1835; the whole book in January 1837. The mood in which it was written throws a light on the excellences as on the defects of the history. The Reminiscences again record the gloom and defiance of "Thomas the Doubter" walking through the London streets "with a feeling similar to Satan's stepping the burning marl," and scowling at the equipages about Hyde Park Corner, sternly thinking, "Yes, and perhaps none of you could do what I am ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... are apparently all based on pure conjecture, or unrectified gossip, as shown by Mr Bolton Corney in his razorly reply to Mr Isaac D'israeli. But Thomas Hariot, on the contrary, possessed abundantly what they all lacked, the necessary credentials. For proof of this assertion the doubter, as well as the lover of confirmed historical accuracy, is referred to the Hariot papers still preserved partly at Petworth and partly ...
— Thomas Hariot • Henry Stevens
... you would have written your own negative, it appeared to me, by some post in the day, if you had received my note in time. It happened well too, altogether, as you have a friend with you, though Mr. Kenyon does not come, and will not come, I dare say; for he spoke like a doubter at the moment; and as this Tuesday wears on, I am not likely to have any visitors on it after all, and may as well, if the rain quite ceases, go and spend my solitude on the park a little. Flush wags his tail at that proposition when I speak it loud out. And I am to write to you before Friday, ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... Shakspeare what he himself said of a similar production of the poet Rowe, 'that it does not discover much profundity or penetration,' we ought in common fairness always to add that nobody else has ever written about Shakspeare one-half so entertainingly. If this statement be questioned, let the doubter, before reviling me, re-read the preface, and if, after he has done so, he still demurs, we shall be content to withdraw the observation, which, indeed, has only been made for the purpose of introducing a quotation from the ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell
... He could doubt the existence of the external world, and treat it as a phantasm; he could doubt the existence of a God, and treat the belief as a superstition; but of the existing of his thinking, doubting mind no sort of doubt was possible. He, the doubter, existed if nothing else existed. The existence that was revealed in his own consciousness was the primary fact, the first indubitable certainty. Hence his famous "Cogito, ergo sum" ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... ill who leave me out; When me they fly, I am the wings; I am the doubter and the doubt, And I ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... say further that there was never a rumour in the world that seemed based upon more various or more convincing evidence. And it wasn't true.... Well, I find I'm a changed man. I find I am no longer a believer: I am a doubter." ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... perching, and whose nest never had been found by a person so familiar with all outdoors as my father. Then came a second discovery: it could curl its beak in a little coil when leaving a flower. A few days later I saw distinctly that it had four wings but I could discover no feet. I became a rank doubter, and when these convincing proofs were carried to my father, he also ...
— Moths of the Limberlost • Gene Stratton-Porter
... I procur'd Xenophon's Memorable Things of Socrates, wherein there are many instances of the same method. I was charm'd with it, adopted it, dropt my abrupt contradiction and positive argumentation, and put on the humble inquirer and doubter. And being then, from reading Shaftesbury and Collins, become a real doubter in many points of our religious doctrine, I found this method safest for myself and very embarrassing to those against ...
— The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... you still will doubt and fear me, And think this heart to other loves will stray, If I must swear, then, lovely doubter, hear me; By every dream I have when thou'rt away, By every throb I feel when thou art near me, I love but ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... religion is not confined to the Jews alone. Every great world-faith experiences nowadays the throes of transformation and readjustment. Mistaking them for the final struggle, the believer wrings his hands in despair over the impending doom, and the doubter contemplates a religionless future with a great deal of glee. But both will be disappointed in their reckoning. Religion, as we shall see, is entirely too inherent in human life to be dispensable. The belief that it has served its purpose in the evolution ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... this young boy's piercing mind, the arguments against Christianity seemed stronger than those which were brought forward to refute them. Thus the lad became, not a positive unbeliever, but an honest doubter. He now sought earnestly for other ...
— Benjamin Franklin, A Picture of the Struggles of Our Infant Nation One Hundred Years Ago - American Pioneers and Patriots Series • John S. C. Abbott
... Matthew Arnold's "Literature and Dogma", helped to widen the mental horizon, while making a return to the old faith more and more impossible. The church services were a weekly torture, but feeling as I did that I was only a doubter, I spoke to none of my doubts. It was possible, I felt, that all my difficulties might be cleared up, and I had no right to shake the faith of others while in uncertainty myself. Others had doubted and had ...
— Autobiographical Sketches • Annie Besant
... friends, and home. Never woman endeavored with truer single-heartedness to understand her spouse. In her life's aim was no failure. Let him expatiate on sound to the bounds of fancy's extravagance, she could confidently follow, and would have volunteered her testimony to a doubter, as if all were a question of tangible fact, to be definitely proved. So in every matter. For all the comfort she was to the man she loved, for her confidence in him who deserved it, for her patient endurance of whatsoever ill she met or bore, for choosing to walk in so peaceful a manner, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... presented, a great calm came over him, and he died a believer. No incident of my life has given me a purer pleasure than this; but it was a strange thing! Nobody could have had access to him as I had—I, a doubter and a stumbler all my life; it looks like the hand ...
— California Sketches, Second Series • O. P. Fitzgerald
... the poet Agur and the pious protestations of his anonymous adversary, the thesis and the antithesis, inextricably interwoven in the section now known as the thirtieth chapter. He himself apparently identified the two antagonists—the scoffing doubter and the believing Jew; most modern theologians have cheerfully followed his example. The fact would seem to be that the orthodox member of the Jewish community, who thus emphatically objected to aggressive ...
— The Sceptics of the Old Testament: Job - Koheleth - Agur • Emile Joseph Dillon
... paint the struggles of an ardent, enthusiastic, inquisitive spirit to deliver itself from the harassing uncertainties, to penetrate the dread obscurity, which overhangs the lot of man. The first faint scruples of the Doubter are settled by the maxim: 'Believe nothing but thy own reason; there is nothing holier than truth.' But Reason, employed in such an inquiry, can do but half the work: she is like the Conjuror that has pronounced the spell of invocation, but has forgot the ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... this, St. Thomas, after the ascension of the Lord, was again troubled with doubts, whereupon the Virgin Mother threw down her girdle, which left its imprint upon the rock, and thus converted the doubter fully and finally. ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... suddenly; that he was killed in the neighborhood of Pistoia fighting against the Generals of the Republic, and that he left certain accomplices in Rome who were put to death by an edict of the Senate. So much I think is certain to the most truculent doubter. From his contemporaries, Sallust and Cicero, we have a very strongly expressed opinion of his character. They have left to us denunciations of the man which have made him odious to all after-ages, so that modern poets have made him a stock character, and have dramatized him ...
— Life of Cicero - Volume One • Anthony Trollope
... the Roman guard became as dead men; "the Lord was risen indeed!" and He appeared to His disciples, and so overcame the unbelief of Thomas by His very presence, bearing the marks of His human sufferings, that the doubter fell down and "worshipped Him," saying, "My Lord, and my God!" Jesus remained on earth for forty days, and we still "behold the man." He conversed familiarly with His apostles, ate and drank with ...
— Parish Papers • Norman Macleod
... the appearance of our Lord to Mary, give the dawning of faith before sight and the rapturous faith born of sight. In the remainder of the chapter are two more instances of faith following vision, and the teaching of the whole is summed up in Christ's words to the doubter, 'Because thou hast seen Me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... solely what is called in some quarters the preaching of the gospel, I do not agree with the opinion. The benefits of Christ's redemption are pearls which must not be cast before swine. The gospel is not for the stupid, or for the doubter,—still less for the scoffer. Christ's atonement is to be offered to conscious guilt, and in order to conscious guilt there must be the application of the decalogue. John Baptist must prepare the way for the merciful Redeemer, by legal and close preaching. And the merciful ...
— Sermons to the Natural Man • William G.T. Shedd
... complete man, strong at every point. Each had a strength of his own, with a corresponding weakness. Then Jesus yoked them together so that each two made one good man. The hasty, impetuous, self-confident Peter needed the counterbalancing of the cautious, conservative Andrew. Thomas the doubter was matched by Matthew the strong believer. It was not an accidental grouping by which the Twelve fell into six parts. Jesus knew what was in man; and he yoked these men together in a way which brought out the best ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... set out to do sooner than he had purposed. That intellectual quickening which had made him a doubter in religious matters had made him also a freethinker in politics. He brought down upon himself the wrath of the government by public expressions of opinion antagonistic to the policy of the hour; and, like others equally imprudent under the stimulus of new ideas, he was obliged to leave the country. ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn
... severe struggle for the young man, and the Superior, who observed the storm which was surging within the doubter's breast, did not hesitate to attribute it to ...
— Rabbi and Priest - A Story • Milton Goldsmith
... spite of his failure, succeeded in the end. Tradition tells us that he died a martyr for his love and devotion to his Lord. How was he saved? How was he brought to the joy and usefulness that are born of certainty? Thomas, you know, was a doubter. A very thoroughgoing doubter he was. How then, in spite of his doubts, did he find his way into ...
— Sermons on Biblical Characters • Clovis G. Chappell
... of Earle's piety and devotion, and give its proper weight to the very significant epithet "innocent," used both by Walton and Clarendon, we shall, I think, be slow to suspect his motive in attacking the sceptic. The honest doubter, it must be remembered, was not the familiar—much less the fashionable—figure he has become since, and it is very certain that Earle described one type of sceptic both of his day and our own. That his sketch may have done injustice to other types is likely ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... firstly we notice the rise of rationalism, that is of the impulse to criticise belief and to ask for that element in it which approves itself to the reflecting mind. Reason asserts its right to judge of tradition; the doubter suggests emendations in the legend; the piously inclined turn their attention to those parts only which are capable of lofty treatment. This tendency is fatal to polytheism. As reason knows not gods but only God, the gods can only hold their place on condition that they are what God must ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies
... the other, just as heaven and hell are opposites. Considering doubters more closely, we find that doubters believe; but they believe the opposite of what they should believe. Doubters believe the wrong thing. A doubter is one who could and ought to believe facts, but for some reason or other can not bring himself to do it. Instead, he believes another set of things, which appear to ...
— Adventures in the Land of Canaan • Robert Lee Berry
... vanishes any certainty as to the existence both of Mr. Spencer and his critic, and by which it is equally impossible to have a thought free from doubt, or to go so far as to affirm the existence of that very doubt or of the doubter who ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart
... athletic in body, unconquerable, and immortal. Such individuals meet in comradeship, and pass together along the open roads of the world. No one is excluded because of his poverty or his sins; there is room in the ideal America for everybody except the doubter and sceptic. Whitman does not linger over the smaller groups of human society, like the family. He is not a fireside poet. He passes directly from his strong persons, meeting freely on the open road, to his conception of "these States." One of his typical visions of the breadth and depth ...
— The American Spirit in Literature, - A Chronicle of Great Interpreters, Volume 34 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Bliss Perry
... in the Socratic method; and soon after I procured Xenophon's Memorable Things of Socrates, wherein there are many instances of the same method. I was charmed with it, adopted it, dropt my abrupt contradiction and positive argumentation, and put on the humble inquirer and doubter.... I found this method safest for myself and very embarrassing to those against whom I used it; therefore I took a delight in it, practised it continually, and grew very artful and expert in drawing people, even of superior knowledge, into concessions, ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... subjects is the contemptible person,—not the labourer who digs the soil for the planting of corn which shall help to feed his fellows. And the most despicable creature of our time and century, is not the man who doubts Christ, or questions God—for Christ was patient with the doubter, and God answers, through the medium of science, every honest question—it is the man who pretends to believe and lives on the pretence, while his conduct gives the lie to his profession! That is why you—and why ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... peaceable. It is simply leaving things to the will of the majority. Right ideas will win, no matter what the opposition to them. Better change the arena of conflict. A single champion of an idea would once challenge a doubter and prove his hypothesis by the blood of the disputant; you do the same thing on a great scale. The Southern people—very good people as you and I have cause to know—think the constitution gives them the right, or rather cannot take away the right, to withdraw ...
— Who Goes There? • Blackwood Ketcham Benson
... not the story of the O'Iwa Inari, the Yotsuya Kwaidan, as a mere fairy tale or novel of the day. The shrine of the Tamiya Inari stands now to attest the truth of the tradition. Let the doubter but witness the faith of the believer in the powers of the fearful lady; and, if doubt still continues to exist, the salutary fear of others at least will ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... every chance of success. Fiddlesticks! I snap my fingers at such folly. What do these gentlemen say to the case of FIGTREE, the great Q.C.? Everybody knows that FIGTREE is, without exception, the most indolent man in the world. Let any doubter walk down Middle Temple Lane and ask the first young barrister he meets what he thinks of FIGTREE. I am ready to wager my annual income that the reply will be, "What, Old FIGTREE! Why, he's the laziest man at the Bar. I thought everybody knew that." I may be told, of course, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, December 12, 1891 • Various
... them. But he heartily approved the substance of the work, though his object in the publication of the Fragments was more to feel the public pulse than to instill theological doctrines into the minds of the people. Reimarus had been a doubter like many others of his countrymen. He committed his mental phases to paper, though he thought that it was not yet time to issue them for public notice. The Fragments published by Lessing contain the gist of his entire work, and contributed far more ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... such witnesses, whether believing or sceptical, would have found no place for their science, for the miracles of Christ were of such a kind that the most scientific doubter could have no more accounted for them than the most ignorant. The miracle of which, next to our Lord's own Resurrection, we have the fullest evidence, is that of the feeding of the 5,000; for it is recorded by each one of the four Evangelists. Now, if this miracle had been performed in the presence ...
— The Lost Gospel and Its Contents - Or, The Author of "Supernatural Religion" Refuted by Himself • Michael F. Sadler
... the Indians or whoever hid this ivory, if there's any there, get it up to the cave, if it is a cave?" asked Don the Doubter. ...
— The Boy Scouts on the Yukon • Ralph Victor
... intuitions which all will not admit to be indubitable. To his assertion: "Reason shows me that if my happiness is desirable and a good, the equal happiness of any other person must be equally desirable," [Footnote: The Methods of Ethics, Book III, chapter xiv, Sec 5.] the doubter may reply: Desirable to whom? to him or ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton
... it is a great evil thus to be in doubt, but it is at least an indispensable duty to seek when we are in such doubt; and thus the doubter who does not seek is altogether completely unhappy and completely wrong. And if besides this he is easy and content, professes to be so, and indeed boasts of it; if it is this state itself which is the subject of his joy and vanity, I have no words ...
— Pascal's Pensees • Blaise Pascal
... The very justification for doubting the accepted opinion, the sacredness of truth, commands caution and firm conviction that our new view is something more than a passing caprice of the mind, before we publish it. But when the doubter is sure of this, then let him no longer ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 24, November, 1891 • Various
... from the one that alone was and could be fruitful is obvious enough. But by and by out of the very doubt came the sweetness[150] of a higher and truer insight. He became aware that there were "things in heaven and earth undreamt of in your philosophy," as another doubter said, who had just finished his studies, but could not find his way out of the scepticism they engendered ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... she had no right to be in church. She replied that if this were so she would not come and, her father being indifferent upon the point (Lady Jane did not count in such matters), ceased her attendance. It was the old story of a strait-minded bigot forcing a large-minded doubter out of the fold that ought to have been wide enough for both of them. Moreover, this difference of opinion on matters of public and spiritual interest ended in a private and mundane animosity. Mr. Knight could never forgive a pupil of his own, whose ability he recognized, who dared to question ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard
... the invisible." Like Watteau, Laforgue was "condemned" from the beginning to "a green thought in a green shade." The spirit in him, the "shadow," devoured his soul, pulverised his will, made of him a Hamlet without a propelling cause, a doubter in a world of cheap certitudes and insolent fatuities, but barred him proffering his pearls to pigs. He came before Nietzsche, yet could he have said with Zarathustra: "I love the great despisers because they are the great adorers, they are arrows of longing ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... just.' We will surely save it, but that done, we have an arduous task before us. Christianity and love must take the place of expediency, machiavelism, and cunning diplomacy in the sphere of politics. We see the smile of scorn upon the lips of the doubter; he deems the thing impossible. So he would have pronounced our noble record of the last three years, three years ago. Nay, it is already half accomplished, since we now know it must be done. The black man free, the red man must at last receive attention. The protection ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... of Mantua. With a German's fondness for music, he beguiled the tedium of many a long winter evening. With his German education he had imbibed radicalism to its full extent. Thoroughly conversant with the Sacred Scriptures he was a doubter, if not a positive unbeliever, from the Pentateuch to Revelation. In addition to this, his flings at the Chaplain, his messmate, made him unpopular with the religiously inclined of the regiment. He had ...
— Red-Tape and Pigeon-Hole Generals - As Seen From the Ranks During a Campaign in the Army of the Potomac • William H. Armstrong
... own he appears to me to be very far behind a college porter or a parish beadle. To affirm that the eye is not made to see, nor the ear to hear, nor the stomach to digest, is not this the most revolting folly that ever entered the human mind? Doubter as I am, this insanity seems to me evident, and I say so. For my part, I see in nature, as in the arts, only final causes; and I believe that an apple tree is made to bear apples, as I believe that a watch is made to tell the hour." Voltaire charges Warburton with calumniating ...
— The Christian Foundation, February, 1880
... of which spread through the whole Colony and confounded any possible doubter, found record in the "Magnalia", that storehouse of fact so judiciously combined with fable that the author himself could probably never tell what he had himself seen, and what had been gleaned from others. Mr. John Wilson, ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... agreement? The man of the street is not averse to feeling, as a rule, even when it is carried to egregious lengths of sentimentality. A stroll through a village when all the victrolas are in operation would settle this point unequivocally for any doubter. It seems that the philistine's quarrel with the poet arises from the fact that, unlike the makers of phonograph records, the poet dares to follow feeling in defiance of public sentiment. Like the conservative that he is, the ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... expense of quitting the prejudice of your whole precedent life. I will not forestall your judgment by saying anything more of this book, but only wish it may afford as much entertainment as it has me. This historic doubter dined with me yesterday, Williams, Lord March, Cadogan, and Fanshaw, qui m'a demande ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue
... Let such doubter ponder well the signification of truth, its relation to life, its identity with the good, and the paramount might of wisdom and a clear understanding, and he will be ready to exclaim with the passionate piety of St. Augustine: "Ubi inveni veritatem, ...
— The Religious Sentiment - Its Source and Aim: A Contribution to the Science and - Philosophy of Religion • Daniel G. Brinton
... stopped in Rotterdam once, on a certain journey homewards from Flanders and the Baths of Aix-la-Chapelle, to see that admirable sage, the doubter Bayle. Their sublime messenger roused the poor man, in his garret there, in the Bompies,—after dark: but he had a headache that night; was in bed, and could not come. He followed them next day; leaving his paper imbroglios, his historical, philosophical, anti-theological marine-stores; ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. I. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Birth And Parentage.—1712. • Thomas Carlyle
... that, the philosophy of ready-made clothes applies as much to unbelief as to faith. Now and then one meets a mind distracted by genuine doubt, and it is refreshing and stimulating to grapple with its problems. One respects the doubter because the doubt fits him like the elastic silk; it seems a part and parcel of his personality. But at other times one can see at a glance that the doubter is all togged out in ready-made clothes, ...
— Mushrooms on the Moor • Frank Boreham
... the D primary, traded rooms with Miss Crutcher, who taught the "a-b Abs." Miss Munsell was a big fat lady, and she smiled so that the dimples came in both cheeks and her double Chin was doubter than ever, when she told the children what a dear, nice teacher Miss Crutcher was, and how fond she was of them, and wouldn't they like to make a Christmas present to their dear, kind teacher? They all said ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood
... way ahere? Now see, here is dust, dry dust on her hull. She ahain't ben in the water mor'n ten minutes, I sware," It required but a moment's investigation of my Chincoteague audience to discover that the dust was mud from the tide, and the doubter brought down the ridicule of his more discriminating neighbors upon him, and slunk away ...
— Voyage of The Paper Canoe • N. H. Bishop
... a part of the war, I was a doubter of nobility in others and a sceptic as regards myself. The growth of my personal vision was complete when I recognised that the capacity of heroism is latent in everybody, and only awaits the bigness of the opportunity to call ...
— The Glory of the Trenches • Coningsby Dawson
... New York, from the Beginning of the World to the End of the Dutch Dynasty; containing, among Many Surprising and Curious Matters, the Unutterable Ponderings of Walter the Doubter, the Disastrous Projects of William the Testy, and the Chivalric Achievements of Peter the Headstrong,—the Three Dutch Governors of New Amsterdam: being the Only Authentic History of the Times that ever hath been or ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... flags are streaming before it, a little garish, a little gaudy; too like a coloured photograph; not what one thinks a cathedral ought to be. Should it have all these hues? one asks oneself, and replies no. But the saint does not long permit this scepticism: after a while he sees that the doubter drifts into his vestibule, to be rather taken by the novelty of the mosaics—so much quieter in tone here—and the pavement, with its myriad delicate patterns. And then the traveller dares the church itself and ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... the Doubter is not yet extinct, and many, as usual, shook their wise heads at the enterprise. It was admitted that in inland navigation the Americans had beaten the world; that except an occasional blow-up, their river steamers ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... too well to let their stupid unbelief and hardness of heart interfere with His own gracious purposes! How tenderly He rebukes the spirit of this doubter. "Why," as if He said, "Why distrust me? Why stultify thyself with these unbelieving surmises. Hast thou already forgotten my own gracious assurances, and thine own unqualified acceptance of them. My hand is never shortened that it ...
— Memories of Bethany • John Ross Macduff
... In this man we have, however, rather the refined sensualist and elegant scholar who amuses himself with the subtleties of the old Greek philosophy, than a sincere seeker for truth, or even a sincere doubter. His views are fully given in a short ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... watched his young friend's condition with anxiety. Was it the prison life—or was it perhaps the books—that had transformed this young man, who had once gone ahead with tempestuous recklessness, into a hesitating doubter who could not come to a decision? Personality was of doubtful value when it grew at the expense of energy. It had been the old man's hope that it would have developed greater energy through being replanted in fresh, untouched soil, and he tried to rouse ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... God. In my worst trials I have never doubted that," replied Lord Cairnforth, solemnly. And then he repeated those words of St. Paul, to which many an agonized doubter has clung, as being the last refuge of sorrow—the only key to mysteries which sometime shake the firmest faith—"'For now we see through a glass darkly, but then face to face; now I know in part, but then shall I know even as ...
— A Noble Life • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... and sedentary life than ever before, and could hear the voices of solitude; he was not the busy riding missionary of "The Bible in Spain," nor the feted author, but the unsocial morbid tinker, philologist, boxer, and religious doubter. It has been said that "he was a Celt of Celts. His genius was truly Celtic." {218a} It has been said that "he inherited nothing from Norfolk save his accent and his love of 'leg of mutton and turnips.'" {218b} Yet his father, the Cornish "Celt," appears ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... lack of principle, Miss Rose,' said her brother-in-law, 'that turns a man a doubter in politics, but ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... I expect, boys!" exploded the doubter; "it sounds just like a fairy story to me. But then there was some one here, because we glimpsed him disappearing like a falling star. I wanted to give him a shot, but I remembered what Max here said about ...
— At Whispering Pine Lodge • Lawrence J. Leslie
... anything," said a poor doubter, who had trusted in human prudence, and been disappointed; who had endeavored to walk by the lumine of self-derived intelligence, instead of by the light of divine truth, and so lost his way in the world. He was fifty years ...
— All's for the Best • T. S. Arthur
... confess it; that could bring down a proud man's pride and make him humble; that could put courage into a coward and strike dead the courage of the bravest; that could appease resentments and real hatreds; that could make the doubter believe and the hopeless hope again; that could purify the impure mind; that could persuade—ah, there it is—persuasion! that is the word; what or who is it that it couldn't persuade? The maniac of Domremy—the fairy-banishing ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... The doubter may scoff, and the pessimist may croak, but even they must take hope at the picture presented in the simple and touching incident of eight Grand Army veterans, with their silvery heads bowed in sympathy, escorting the lifeless body of the Daughter of the ...
— America First - Patriotic Readings • Various
... me chant Hymns to Peter Stuyvesant! Had you bid me sing of Wouter, (He! the Onion-head! the Doubter!) But to rhyme of this one,—Mocker! ...
— Collected Poems - In Two Volumes, Vol. II • Austin Dobson
... stood forward on every occasion the uncompromising champion of spiritual independence, and of the rights of the Christian people. He took his place far in the van. He was no mere half-and-half non-intrusionist,—no complaisant eulogist of the Veto,—no timid doubter that the Church in behalf of her people might possibly stretch her powers too far, and thus separate her temporalities from her cures. Nothing could be more absurd, he asserted, than to imagine such a thing. On parade day, when she stood resting on her ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... man who affects to doubt everything he hears, I never hesitate about writing him down an ass. A great doubter is a solemn and self-conceited prig. How amusing is it to see the blockhead shake his empty pate, compress his lips into a sneer, and turn up his absurd unmeaning eyes in dubious disbelief, when he ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 583 - Volume 20, Number 583, Saturday, December 29, 1832 • Various
... those who went forth through the death change into light and liberty 'over there.' Mediums, as intermediaries, have enabled spirit people to comfort the sad and encourage the weak; to relieve the doubter and console the bereaved; to confirm the old-world traditions regarding bygone spirit intervention and revelation, and supplement our hopes and intuitions with proof palpable. Present day experiences ...
— Genuine Mediumship or The Invisible Powers • Bhakta Vishita
... achievement in coherence, but neither was Browett a coherent personality. It was, however, a swift, vivid sermon—a short and a busy one, with a reason for each of its parts, incoherent though the parts were. For Browett was a cynic doubter of his own faith; at once an admirer of Voltaire and a believer in the Established Order of Things; despising a radical and a conservative equally, but, hating more than either, a clumsy compromiser. He must be preached to as one not yet ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson |
