"Moralist" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that Browning meant to make self-sacrifice the root of Constance's doings. If he did, he has made a terrible mess of the whole thing. He was much too clear-headed a moralist to link self-sacrifice to systematic lying. Self-sacrifice is not self-sacrifice at all when it sacrifices truth. It may wear the clothes of Love, but, in injuring righteousness, it injures the essence of love. It has a surface beauty, for it imitates love, but if mankind is allured by this ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... comes to the study of the hula and its songs in the spirit of a censorious moralist he will find nothing for him; if as a pure ethnologist, he will take pleasure in pointing out the physical resemblances of the Hawaiian dance to the languorous grace of the Nautch girls, of the geisha, and other oriental dancers. But if ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... correspondence, on the whole, with the Haggadah, which in a primitive way draws philosophical and ethical lessons from the Bible narrative. It is a free interpretation of the Scriptures, the expression of the individual moralist; it loves to point a moral and adorn a tale, and in many cases it is in agreement with the Hellenistic school. To take a few typical examples: An early interpretation explains the story of the Brazen Serpent, as Philo does,[302] to mean that as long as Israel are ...
— Philo-Judaeus of Alexandria • Norman Bentwich
... persons who did not approve of his paradoxes, one is slightly inclined—in spite of reverence for his moral strength—to set him down as a nuisance, and to wonder how people managed to put up with him at times. In reading the conversations and essays of the moralist we constantly meet with passages which we should think over temperately were it not that we are informed by the critic or his biographer that only fools would venture to question ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... before his time no charity—no pity?—no money available for hopeless poverty? Not much—very little, I conceive; about so much as Shakspeare insinuates that there is of milk in a male tiger. Think, for instance, of that black-hearted reprobate, Cicero, the moralist. This moral knave, who wrote such beautiful Ethics, and was so wicked—who spoke so charmingly and acted so horribly—mentions, with a petrifying coolness, that he knew of desolate old women in Rome who passed three days in succession without tasting food. Did not the wretch, when ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... a suggestive question. I thought of more than one incident in my own career which might be harshly received by a strict moralist. It is true that I have always been engaged on what I believed was a lawful task; but the due execution of that task had sometimes involved actions which I should have shrunk from ...
— The International Spy - Being the Secret History of the Russo-Japanese War • Allen Upward
... stepped into the skiff. All her fears related to the money in the possession of her friend, which, she was almost certain, had been stolen. She was moralist enough to understand that even if the money had been found on the floor, as Fanny represented, it was just as much stolen as though it had been taken from Mr. Grant's pocket-book. Kate had not engaged in this theft, and she was not willing to bear any of the blame on account ...
— Hope and Have - or, Fanny Grant Among the Indians, A Story for Young People • Oliver Optic
... nature had enabled him to have employed in elevated speculations. On a bulk, in a cellar, or in a glass-house, among thieves and beggars, was to be found the author of The Wanderer, the man, whose remarks in life might have assisted the statesman, whose ideas of virtue might have enlightened the moralist, whose eloquence might have influenced senates, and whose delicacy might have polished courts. His distresses, however afflictive, never dejected him. In his lowest sphere he wanted not spirit to assert the natural dignity of wit, and was always ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber
... word of his personal belief crossed Spencer's lips during the talk with the guide. Rather did he impress on his angry and vengeful hearer that a forgotten scandal should be left in its tomb. He took this line, not that he posed as a moralist, but because he hated to acknowledge, even to himself, that he was helped in his wooing by Helen's horror of his rival's lapse from the standard every pure minded woman sets up in her ideal lover. Ethically, he might be wrong; in his conscience he was justified. He had suffered too grievously from ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... myself to sleep, a few nights since, I took up, according to my custom on such occasions, an old copy of Montaigne, the usual companion of my vigils, the fellow-occupant of my pillow, and the only moralist whose musings one can read with pleasure on the wrong side ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... song, It was a Lording's daughter. There remain the Venus and Adonis sonnets and My flocks feed not. Mr. Swinburne may call these "dirty and dreary doggrel," an he list, with no more risk than of being held a somewhat over-anxious moralist. But to call the whole book worthless is mere ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... thoughtful visitor should not fail to read the tombstones. If a lover of books, he will be interested in learning that the founder of the famous publishing firm of Messrs. Macmillan belonged to the North Cock farm near Loch Ranza. The pensive moralist will perhaps be most affected by an old stone, A.D. 1813, declaring that Elspa Macmillan left this inhospitable world, aged 86. That ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... seek for truth in poetry is a protest against the constant tendency to read it for the sake of the emotions which it stirs, the tendency to make it a refined amusement and nothing more. That is a deeper wrong to art than any which the theoretical moralist can inflict. Of the two, it is better to read poetry for ethical doctrines than for fine sensations; for poetry purifies the passions only when it lifts the reader into the sphere of ...
— Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher • Henry Jones
... last relation between words and things which makes the central difficulty of thought about politics. The words are so rigid, so easily personified, so associated with affection and prejudice; the things symbolised by the words are so unstable. The moralist or the teacher deals, as a Greek would say, for the most part, with 'natural,' the politician always with 'conventional' species. If one forgets the meaning of motherhood or childhood, Nature has yet made for us unmistakable ...
— Human Nature In Politics - Third Edition • Graham Wallas
... contemporary complaints. Now, it is the jagged cut of the garments, punched and shredded by the man-milliner; now, the wide and high collars and the long-pointed boots, which attract the indignation of the moralist; at one time he inveighs against the "horrible disordinate scantness" of the clothing worn by gallants, at another against the "outrageous array" in which ladies love to exhibit their charms. The knights' horses are decked ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... soul, dissolving, as it were, into a spirit of melancholy enthusiasm, acknowledges that silent pathos, which governs without subduing the heart."—"This season, so sacred to the enthusiast, has been, in all ages, selected by the poet and the moralist, as a theme for poetic description and moral reflection;" and we may add that amidst such scenes, Newton drew the most glorious problem of his philosophy, and Bishop Horne his simple but pathetic lines on the "Fall of the Leaf,"—lessons ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 282, November 10, 1827 • Various
... from this act was all that the most ardent moralist could have desired. Lily felt a new interest in herself as a person of charitable instincts: she had never before thought of doing good with the wealth she had so often dreamed of possessing, but now her horizon was enlarged by the vision of a prodigal philanthropy. ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... "by all that's wonderful! From the ballroom to the prison-house! There's a splendid subject for the moralist. Where have you been, Juan? your people think you are dead. Miller is frantic; all your friends in Lima are ...
— At the Point of the Sword • Herbert Hayens
... side, Merton had given the lady a valuable testimonial to character. Moreover, the Vidame would be at her party, and Mrs. Malory told herself that she could study the ground. Above all, the girls were so anxious to go: they seldom had such a chance. Therefore, while the Early Victorian moralist hesitated, ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... hear in accents low, The sportive kind reply: Poor moralist! and what art thou? A solitary fly! Thy joys no glittering female meets, No hive hast thou of hoarded sweets, No painted plumage to display: On hasty wings thy youth is flown; Thy sun is set, thy spring is gone— We ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... says the moralist?—"Portray life as it is. Delude not the senses by deceptive appearances. Arouse your hero? call to his aid stern philosophy and sober reason. They will dissipate the rainbow-glories of unreal pleasure, and banish the glittering meteors of unsubstantial happiness. Or if these fail, lead him to the ...
— Alonzo and Melissa - The Unfeeling Father • Daniel Jackson, Jr.
... sentiment, and most of what there is of humour in the Tatler and the Spectator are his. And he created the dramatis personae out of whose adventures the slender thread of continuity which binds the essays together is woven. Addison, though less open to the onslaughts of the conventional moralist, was a less lovable personality. Constitutionally endowed with little vitality, he suffered mentally as well as bodily from languor and lassitude. His lack of enthusiasm, his cold-blooded formalism, caused ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair
... On the other hand, it is a good thing, not only at sea, but through life, to investigate as much as possible for yourself, and correct any errors into which you fall as you learn more. "Bought wit is better than taught wit," the old moralist wrote; and he was quite right, for the things taught us are too often forgotten, while those which we have bought at the cost of a good deal of puzzling and study fix themselves firmly in the mind. So, as soon as the tub was left standing ...
— Steve Young • George Manville Fenn
... this awkward kind could not long remain untold; and it became necessary to mask it under the more moderate title of a spiritual-wifedom. It required an acute metaphysician to comprehend this spiritual relationship; and the moralist was puzzled to understand its sanctity. During that period, while the Saints dwelt within the pale of the Gentiles' country this cloak was kept on; but after their "exodus" to the Salt Lake settlements, the flimsy garment was thrown off—being found too inconvenient to be ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... directly or indirectly preaching a sermon—enforcing a moral—as though he could not help it. "He would rise from the dead to preach a sermon." He wrote some first-rate fables, and might indeed have figured to effect as a moralist-fabulist, as truly he was from beginning to end. There was a bit of Bunyan in him as well as of AEsop and Rousseau and Thoreau—the mixture that found coherency in his most peculiarly patient and forbearing temper is what gives at once the quaintness, the freedom, ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... goodness. There are pathetic and noble voices of seekers after God, which when they do not gladden yet strengthen and purify, and which catch at moments an exquisite tone of peace and joy. Such are Clough and Matthew Arnold. We have one moralist of the Spencerian school, George Eliot, who unites a strong ethical sense with a wonderful reading of human nature. Her essential message, told again and again in every book, is, "Life may be ruined by ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... deference. According to the author, we learn that Hipparchus, passionately attached to letters, brought Anacreon to Athens, and lived familiarly with Simonides. He seems to have been inspired with the ambition of a moralist, and distributed Hermae, or stone busts of Mercury, about the city and the public roads, which, while answering a similar purpose to our mile-stones, arrested the eye of the passenger with pithy and laconic ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... to two eminent authorities. Now be so good as to listen. The great moralist says: "To trifle with the vocabulary which is the vehicle of social intercourse is to tamper with the currency of human intelligence. He who would violate the sanctities of his mother tongue would invade the recesses of the ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... artist, and one of the very greatest, but even before and beyond that he was intensely a moralist, as only the moralists of our true and noble time have been. Not Tolstoy, not Ibsen himself, has more profoundly and indignantly felt the injustice of civilization, or more insistently shown the falsity of its fundamental pretensions. He did not ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... were never shaken, that his distinctions of right and wrong were never confounded, and that his faults had nothing of malignity or design, but proceeded from some unexpected pressure or casual temptation." A higher eulogium, from so rigid a moralist, could not be pronounced on a man whose life was, for many years, unsettled and perplexed; and those only who have experienced the pressure of pecuniary necessities can be aware of the difficulty of resisting meanness, ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins
... assents. No fear of giving pain, no wish to soothe the alarms of those to whom we owe much, no respect for the natural clinging of the old to the faith which has accompanied them through honourable lives, can warrant us in saying that we believe to be true what we are convinced is false. The most lax moralist counts a lie wrong, even when the motive is unselfish, and springs from the desire to give pleasure to those whom it is our duty to please. A deliberate lie avowedly does not cease to be one because it concerns spiritual things. Nor is it the less wrong because it is uttered by one to whom ...
— On Compromise • John Morley
... visit the mushtehed, and, thanks to my misfortunes, I truly believe that no man in the whole city could boast of so doleful a cast of countenance as I could. However, as I slowly paced the ground, I recollected one of the tales recited by our great moralist Saadi, in his chapter upon the Morals of Dervishes, which applied so perfectly to my own case, that I own it cheered me greatly, and gave me a degree of courage to encounter the scrutiny of the mushtehed which otherwise I never could have ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... progress, to be sound, must be based ultimately on moral progress. It is of its very nature slow, and is therefore apt to escape the eyes of the moralist or cynic who dwells on the untoward signs of the present. But the Rome for which Mazzini and his compatriots yearned and struggled can hardly fail ultimately to rise to the height of her ancient traditions and of that noble prophecy of Dante: "There is the seat of empire. There never was, ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... slow driving to the busy port Their ponderous wains: Religion's holy priests Leading her red-robed votaries to the steps Of some vast temple: young and old, with hands Crossed on their breasts, hastening to walks and shades Suburban, where some moralist explained The laws of mind and virtue. On a rock A varied group appeared: some dragged along The rough-hewn block; some shaped it into form; Some reared the column, or with chisel traced Forms more than human; ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... as early as 1803, and in recording his impressions notes that "his conversation was full of anecdote and averse from disquisition." The minstrel was a raconteur and lived in the past, the bard was a moralist and ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... the plainest facts of human nature that such a view of mankind is an untrue one. Jealousy, envy, animosities and selfishness no doubt play a great part in life and disguise themselves under many specious forms, and the cynical moralist was not wholly wrong when he declared that 'Virtue would not go so far if Vanity did not keep her company,' and that not only our crimes but even many of what are deemed our best acts may be traced to selfish motives. But he must have had a strangely unfortunate experience of the world who does ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... "battlements to combat God with gold, silver and pearls; wherein the lances were great forked pins, and the arrows the little pins." With more simplicity, the Princess Louise wore her hair cased in a network of gold and jewels, and the austere French moralist who assailed the higher bristling ramparts of vanity would, perhaps, have borne in silence this more modest bastion of the flesh ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... a moralist, who draws truth from sorrow with the hand of a master, and depicts the miseries of mankind only that she may improve their condition."—Bell's ...
— Emilie the Peacemaker • Mrs. Thomas Geldart
... my veins the blood ran, And the curls were on my brow, I did, oh ye undergraduates, Much as ye are doing now. Wherefore bless ye, O beloved ones:- Now unto mine inn must I, Your 'poor moralist,' {51a} betake me, ...
— Verses and Translations • C. S. C.
... in their opposition.—Voltaire, with texts in hand, pursues it from one end to the other of its history, from the first biblical narration to the latest papal bulls, with unflagging animosity and energy, as critic, as historian, as geographer, as logician, as moralist, questioning its sources, opposing evidences, driving ridicule like a pick-ax into every weak spot where an outraged instinct beats against its mystic walls, and into all doubtful places where ulterior patchwork disfigures the primitive structure.—He respects, however, the first foundation, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... benefits, real or imaginary. But the Union was never utilized for Ireland; it proved in reality what Samuel Johnson had predicted, when spoken of in his day: "Do not unite with us, sir," said the gruff old moralist to an Irish acquaintance; "it would be the union of the shark with his prey; we should unite with you only to ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... vices! But flattery is merely a virtue out of place—kindness gone wrong. From the point of view of the moralist, that is. From the point of view of the ordinary mortal, it is what no men—and few women—can ...
— A Great Success • Mrs Humphry Ward
... discovering lately, he thought intemperance to be but the one result that, out of all those arising from the absence of legislation, was the most wretched. For him, drunkenness had a teeming and reproachful history anterior to the drunken stage; and he thought it the first duty of the moralist bent upon annihilating the gin-shop, to "strike deep and spare not" at those previous remediable evils. Certainly this was not the way of Mr. Cruikshank, any more than it is that of the many excellent people who take part in temperance agitations. ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... Moliere alone passed his hand across his eyes. Why? Perhaps to wipe away a tear, perhaps to smother a sigh. Alas! we know that Moliere was a moralist, but he was not a philosopher. "'Tis all one," he said, returning to the topic of the conversation, "Pelisson ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... have amounted to the same thing, and that, perhaps, many sheep had been saved from the greedy fangs of the growing family, by the ingenious plan of the trapper." It was a clever trick, no doubt—a real Yankee shave; but one for which the sternest moralist can scarcely get up ...
— Twenty-Seven Years in Canada West - The Experience of an Early Settler (Volume I) • Samuel Strickland
... odious, more galling, than mere chattel slavery. It has been declared to be an act of charity to enforce ignorance upon the slave, since to inform his intelligence would simply be to make his unnatural lot all the more unbearable. Instance the miserable existence of AEsop, the great black moralist. But this is just what the manumission of the black people of this country has accomplished. They are more absolutely under the control of the Southern whites; they are more systematically robbed of their labor; they are more poorly housed, clothed ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune
... have his Jill: else I fear that we should get fighting for them. Indeed," said he, becoming very grave, "I don't say that it does not happen even now, sometimes. For you know love is not a very reasonable thing, and perversity and self-will are commoner than some of our moralist's think." He added, in a still more sombre tone: "Yes, only a month ago there was a mishap down by us, that in the end cost the lives of two men and a woman, and, as it were, put out the sunlight for us for a while. Don't ask me about it just now; I may tell ...
— News from Nowhere - or An Epoch of Rest, being some chapters from A Utopian Romance • William Morris
... say here that he had no more business skill than a fly. At the same time, he was in no wise sycophantic where either wealth, power or fame was concerned. He considered himself a personage of sorts, and was. The minister, the moralist, the religionist, the narrow, dogmatic and self-centered in any field were likely to be the butt of his humor, and he could imitate so many phases of character so cleverly that he was the life of any idle pleasure-seeking party anywhere. ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... the moralist the worst of all their crimes will perhaps be this, that the wretches tried to dishonour Belgium, after first assassinating her. They have dared to say, write, and proclaim publicly, and affirm to Neutrals, that Belgian women and girls had mutilated German wounded ...
— Their Crimes • Various
... conduct of men. His style is brilliant, but his art is always apparent. He is clear and lively, but rhetorical. Like Voltaire, who inaugurated modern history, he thought more of style than of accuracy of facts. He was a party man, and never soared beyond his party. He aped the moralist, but erected egotism and love of pleasure into proper springs of action, and honored talent disconnected with virtue. Like Carlyle, he exalted strong men, and because they were strong. He was not comprehensive like Cicero, or philosophical like Thucydides, ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... companies rests on the validity of the laws which have been ascertained to govern the seeming irregularity of that human life which the moralist bewails as the most uncertain of things; plague, pestilence, and famine are admitted, by all but fools, to be the natural result of causes for the most part fully within human control, and not the unavoidable tortures inflicted by wrathful ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley
... in the eyes of the moralist, there were extenuating circumstances in Pons' case. Man only lives, in fact, by some personal satisfaction. The passionless, perfectly righteous man is not human; he is a monster, an angel wanting wings. The angel of Christian mythology has nothing but a head. On earth, ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... tested. We are all agreed about the middling and indifferent parts of knowledge and morality; even the most soaring spirits too often take them tamely upon trust. But the man, the philosopher or the moralist, does not stand upon these chance adhesions; and the purpose of any system looks towards those extreme points where it steps valiantly beyond tradition and returns with some covert hint of things outside. Then only can ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... full length on terra firma. Somers would gladly have received some military information from the general, who was in a condition to tell all he knew; which, however, could not have been much, under the circumstances. He concluded that it would be best for him not to awaken the tipsy moralist; and, after waiting a short time on the spot to avoid suspicion, he joined Major Platner, who was smoking his cigar under ...
— The Young Lieutenant - or, The Adventures of an Army Officer • Oliver Optic
... revealed their names would have given them as much worldly fame as any moralist has obtained—but they contemned it! Their religion was raised above all worldly passions! Some profane writers, indeed, have also concealed their names to great works, but their motives were of a very ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... have a soft head, but he thanked God he had a soft heart.' In the heat of the Rebellion, the Republicans spared More, although he had refused to take the Covenant. Campbell says of him, 'He corresponded with Descartes, was the friend of Cudworth, and, as a divine and a moralist, was not only popular in his own time, but has been mentioned with admiration both by Addison and Blair.' One is rather amused at the latter clause. That a man of More's massive learning, noble eloquence, and divine ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... this science, to have a great ministry to policy, as well as morality, and the natural history of the creature, which it is here proposed to reform, is brought out without any regard whatever to considerations which would inevitably affect a moralist, looking at the subject from any less earnest and practical—from any less elevated point ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... l'esprit, De l'homme, &c., 1715-71) is identified with a serious (in contrast to Mandeville), and perfectly consistent, attempt to reduce all morality to direct Self-interest. Though he adopted this ultimate interpretation of the facts, Helvetius was by no means the 'low and loose moralist' that he has been described to be; and, in particular, his own practice displayed ...
— Moral Science; A Compendium of Ethics • Alexander Bain
... not need the experience of many London seasons in order to realise that it is a condition of things in which many of the faculties of our nature are suspended. It is not as a Puritan moralist might put it, that the atmosphere of a whirlpool of carnal vice chokes higher things, for the amusements may be perfectly innocent. Only for a time the people who are engaged in them don't happen to think, or to pity, or to pray, or to condemn, or often, I believe, to love, though ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... with indifference upon such an end. For Confucius in his teaching treated only of man's life on earth, and seems to have had no ideas with regard to the human lot after death; if he had any ideas he preserved an inscrutable silence about them. As a moralist he prescribed the duties of the king and of the father, and advocated the cultivation by the individual man of that rest or apathy of mind which resembles so much the disposition aimed at by the Greek and Roman Stoic. Even as a moralist, he seems to have sacrificed ...
— Chinese Literature • Anonymous
... people, or some of them, want a slice of the profit. That's what's the matter. I don't like to pay a bribe, but in a military time like this, and while Cairo is under martial law, I suppose I must submit to conditions as they are. I'm no theorist or moralist. I'm fairly honest, I think, but I'm a practical business man. Besides, I've a dozen partners interested in this cotton, and I owe it to them to get it off to a market. If I don't, most of them will go to the bowwows, financially. The military authorities have no right to forbid shipment ...
— A Captain in the Ranks - A Romance of Affairs • George Cary Eggleston
... ignorance, surrounded by demoralizing influences, cut off from the blessings of church and Sabbath school, see nothing but licentiousness, intemperance and crime. These young girls are lost forever. They are beyond the reach of the moralist or preacher and have no comprehension of modesty and purity. Virtue to them is a stranger, and has been ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... years, spelt by th' unlettered Muse,[14] The place of fame and elegy supply: And many a holy text around she strews, That teach the rustic moralist ...
— Selections from Five English Poets • Various
... rule in Science, and demonstrates its Principle according to rule, is master of the situation. Nobody can gainsay this. The ego- tistical theorist or shallow moralist may presume to [15] make innovations upon simple proof; but his mistake is visited upon himself and his students, whose minds are, must be, disturbed by this discord, which extends along the whole line of reciprocal thought. ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... excess' of black-letter lore; and of recommending it in every shape, and by every means, directly and indirectly. Yet I have surely not said or done any thing half so decisive in recommendation of it as did our great moralist, Dr. Johnson: who thus introduces the subject in one of his periodical papers.—'The eldest and most venerable of this society, was HIRSUTUS: who, after the first civilities of my reception, found means to introduce the mention of his favourite studies, by a severe censure of those ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... reductions, has been enough to secure a lasting place for Chuang Tz[)u] as the most original of China's philosophical writers. His book is of course under the ban of heterodoxy, in common with all thought opposed to the Confucian teachings. His views as mystic, idealist, moralist and social reformer have no weight with the aspirant who has his way to make in official life; but they are a delight, and even a consolation, to many of the older men, who have no longer anything to gain ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... have lived for a time with Gypsies. Matthew Arnold elaborated Glanvill's tale in a sweet Oxford strain. All these things delight us. Some day we shall be pleased even with the Gypsy's carrion- eating and thieving, "those habits of the Gypsy, shocking to the moralist and sanitarian, and disgusting to the person of delicate stomach," which please Mr. W. H. Hudson "rather than the romance and poetry which the scholar-Gypsy enthusiasts are fond of reading into him." Borrow's Gypsies are wild and ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... and moralist, and the friend and instructor of Xenophon, had publicly taught, in the streets of Athens, for thirty years. His method was to convince people how little they really knew, by asking a series of searching questions which ...
— The Two Great Retreats of History • George Grote
... polite postscript,—"Hope you'll be better soon." Then he retreated to the ledge, spread the bear-skin beside the door, and, rolling himself in a blanket, lit his pipe for his night-long vigil. But Rand, although a martyr, a philosopher, and a moralist, was young. In less than ten minutes the pipe dropped from his lips, and ...
— The Twins of Table Mountain and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... country. "The spelling-book," he says in one of his essays, "does more to form the language of a nation than all other books," and the man who first supplied our young nation with a spelling-book has undoubtedly affected its spelling habits more than any other single person. But Webster was a moralist and a philosopher as well as a speller. He was by no means restricted in his ambition to the teaching of correct spelling; he aimed to have a hand in the moulding of the national mind and the national manners. ...
— Noah Webster - American Men of Letters • Horace E. Scudder
... and which, as it is more or less cultivated, confers within its sphere of activity different degrees of merit and reputation. As the astrologers range the subdivisions of mankind under the planets which they suppose to influence their lives, the moralist may distribute them according to the virtues which they necessarily practise, and consider them as distinguished by prudence or fortitude, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... author had written like a great genius on geometry, though its practical and speculative morals were vicious in the extreme, it might appear, that in voting the statue, they honoured only the geometrician. But Rousseau is a moralist, or he is nothing. It is impossible, therefore, putting the circumstances together, to mistake their design in choosing the author, with whom they have begun to recommend ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... and the utter falsehood of the denial which he had given to the reports that a marriage ceremony had taken place between them—a falsehood which, be it remembered, he had declared to Charles Fox upon his honor to be a truthful statement. The moralist may be a little puzzled how to make up his mind as to the bearing of this incident upon the character of George the Fourth. Does it relieve the murky gloom of George's life by one streak of light if we find that, after all, he did love Mrs. Fitzherbert to the last, and ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume IV (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... if you never see him on earth, God can give you faith that you will see your boy in heaven." And then I told her of a mother who lived down in the southern part of Indiana. Some years ago her boy came up to this city. He was a moralist. My friends, a man has to have more than morality to lean upon in this great city. He hadn't been here long before he was led astray. A neighbor happened to come up here and found him one ...
— Moody's Anecdotes And Illustrations - Related in his Revival Work by the Great Evangilist • Dwight L. Moody
... temporal object, and a transitory possession; but so are other things in themselves which we make much of and pursue. The moralist will tell us that man, in all his functions, is but a flower which blossoms and fades, except so far as a higher principle breathes upon him, and makes him and what he is immortal. Body and mind are carried on into an eternal state of being by the gifts of Divine Munificence; but ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... then, how English! Many of the latent sympathies that enabled me to enjoy the Old Country so well, and that so readily amalgamated themselves with the American ideas that seemed most adverse to them, may have been derived from, or fostered and kept alive by, the great English moralist. Never was a descriptive epithet more nicely appropriate than that! Dr. Johnson's morality was as English ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... observes, that it requires to be more or less than woman, and proposes to divide the human species into men, women, and OPERA-DANCERS, little suspecting that half her readers translate such a classification into "men, women, and ANGELS;" or that they would see herself and her sister moralist go down in the President without a pang, provided Elssler and Taglioni ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... adapted to recall, Like skulls at Memphian banquets, to the mind The words which shook Belshazzar in his hall, And took his kingdom from him: You will find, Though sages may pour out their wisdom's treasure, There is no sterner moralist than Pleasure. ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... pretty nearly to have lost the pluck and prowess which had won Guinevere's love under the walls of Carmelide, and of which the last display is in the great fight with his sister's lover, Sir Accolon. All this may not excuse Guinevere's conduct to the moralist; it certainly makes that conduct artistically probable and legitimate to the critic, as a ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... 598. The Hindu moralist, in this verse, declares the same high morality that Christ himself preached. Merit or sin, according to him, does not depend on the overt act alone. Both depend on the mind. Hence the injunction against even mentally ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... the beautiful and perfect in nature is presented a fibre of absolute smoothness, roundness, and finish, the colors of which resemble, and in the sunlight even excel in brilliancy those of the two precious metals, silver and gold; while the moralist who loves to illustrate the workings of God's providence in bringing forth good out of evil, by comparing the disgusting silk-worm with its beautiful and useful product, may now enforce the lesson by the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... higher latitudes; cannibalism was often enjoined; and in Peru, Florida, and Central America it was not uncommon for parents to slay their own children at the behest of a priest.[291-2] The philosophical moralist, contemplating such spectacles, has thought to recognize in them one consoling trait. All history, it has been said, shows man living under an irritated God, and seeking to appease him by sacrifice of blood; the essence of all religion, it has been added, lies in that of which ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... truth, death, and the vicissitudes of things. They cover the whole field of man as he is, and life as it is, not of either as they ought to be; friendship, ambition, money, studies, business, public duty, in all their actual laws and conditions as they are, and not as the ideal moralist may wish ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... salt sea wind is life itself, may seem as important in its simplicity as the varied impressions of a day in the season. This was Hawthorne's life; was it after all so valueless? He was well aware that even the native moralist, though unenlightened, would call him to account for wasting his time; and he made his apology ...
— Nathaniel Hawthorne • George E. Woodberry
... and the biographies which we have of him, amongst which the famous article in the Edinburgh Review(74) may be cited as a magnificent statue of the great writer and moralist of the last age, raised by the love and the marvellous skill and genius of one of the most illustrious artists of our own; looking at that calm, fair face, and clear countenance—those chiselled features pure and cold, I can't but fancy that ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... original work of science; but it has this merit—no ordinary one—that it communicates the most important truths of physiology in language which any intelligent child can understand; and does so in a manner that every moralist will commend. ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... labours take, The sufferers' servants for the service' sake; Of these a, part I give you—but a part, - Some hearts are hidden, some have not a heart. First let me praise—for so I best shall paint That pious moralist, that reasoning saint! Can I of worth like thine, Eusebius, speak? The man is willing, but the Muse is weak; - 'Tis thine to wait on woe! to soothe! to heal! With learning social, and polite with zeal: In thy pure breast although the passions dwell, They're train'd by virtue, and no more ...
— The Borough • George Crabbe
... is to provide the burglar with money to spend, and as in many instances it has achieved this object, therefore the burglar is a public benefactor and the police are ignorant sentimentalists. No highway robber has yet harrowed us with denunciations of the puling moralist who allows his child to suffer all the evils of poverty because certain faddists think it dishonest to garotte an alderman. Thieves and assassins understand quite well that there are paths of acquisition, even of the ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma: Preface on Doctors • George Bernard Shaw
... account from the ordinary ones. Fools have been hardly dealt with in the saying that the event is their master ("eventus stultorum magister"), seeing how it rules us all. And in nothing more than in history. The event is always present to our minds; along the pathways to it, the historian and the moralist have walked till they are beaten pathways, and we imagine that they were so to the men who first went along them. Indeed, we almost fancy that these ancestors of ours, looking along the beaten path, foresaw the event as we do; whereas, they mostly stumbled upon it suddenly in the forest. This ...
— Friends in Council (First Series) • Sir Arthur Helps
... admirable sentiment on the part of Mr. Mill (with which every absolute moralist will agree), but it contains a complete refutation of his own position, and is a capital instance[209] of the vigorous life of moral intuition in one who professes to have eliminated any fundamental distinction between the "right" and the "expedient." For if an ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart
... is well known, he had, at last, got out of the law a network of prescriptions to enwrap his whole life, to govern every moment of it, every impulse, every action. The Greek notion of felicity, on the other hand, is perfectly conveyed in these words of a great French moralist: "C'est le bonheur des hommes"—when? when they abhor that which is evil?— no; when they exercise themselves in the law of the Lord day and night?—no; when they die daily?—no; when they walk about the New ...
— Culture and Anarchy • Matthew Arnold
... that if there ever was a time in human history in which men were awaiting a hero, a Messiah, a redeemer, it is ours. No opinion is more foolish than the one that in our age there would be no room for a prophet. But he must not be a moralist preaching repentance, not a speculative builder of systems, not a man of lamentations and warnings, but a poet ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... German art and the German stage—on the lights and shadows of Innsbrueck, Munich, Nueremberg and Heidelberg; but just as I was about to put pen to paper I glanced into a little volume on these very topics lately published by that famous novelist and moralist, M. Ernest Feydeau, the fruit of a summer's observation at Homburg. This work produced a reaction; and if I chose to follow M. Feydeau's own example when he wishes to qualify his approbation I might call his treatise by any vile name known to the speech of man. But I content ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... blazed forth with impartial equity against all degrading views of human nature, debasing prejudices, and distrust of national progress,—sparing no tyrant, however wealthy or high in station; pleading for the downcast, however lowly; hoping for the fallen, however scorned. Thanks to this clear-sighted moralist, he gave me, in his own example, a standard of generous Optimism too sun-bright ever to be eclipsed. Let it not be inferred from these hasty outlines, however, that Dr. Dewey was habitually grave, or intent on serious ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey
... modern humor and modern sentimentalism repel us, is that they are unwarrantably familiar. Now, Mr. Sterne, the Superfine Reviewer thinks, "was a true sentimentalist, because he was ABOVE ALL THINGS a true gentleman." The flattering inference is obvious: let us be thankful for having an elegant moralist watching over us, and learn, if not too old, to imitate his high-bred politeness and catch his unobtrusive grace. If we are unwarrantably familiar, we know who is not. If we repel by pertness, we know who never does. ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... statement of her present situation is patent to all who read and observe. It is not an overdrawn picture. In it the moralist beholds the retributive justice of providence. As Spain in the plenitude of her power was ambitious, cruel, and perfidious, so has the measure which she meted out to others been in return accorded to herself. As with fire and sword ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... the task of education. They honoured classical studies; they honoured science, dialectics, philosophy. Their grammar, logic, geometry were substantial additions to the literature of pedagogy. Isaac le Maistre de Sacy and others translated and annotated the Bible. Their theologian, moralist, and controversialist, Pierre Nicole (1625-95), author of Essais de Morale (1671), if not profound or brilliant, was the possessor of learning, good sense, good feeling, and religious faith. Under the influence of St. Cyran, the Port-Royalists were in close ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... sometimes get such control of men and nations, they have realized, that armed resistance becomes a necessity. There are times when not to participate in violence is in itself violence to the welfare of the brethren. But no Christian moralist worth mentioning has ever regarded war per se as other than monstrous, or hoped that by the use of violence anything more could be accomplished than the frustration of a temporarily powerful malicious wickedness. War in itself gives birth to no righteousness. Only such a fire of love as ...
— Introduction to Non-Violence • Theodore Paullin
... floated wide, or Lancelot sang tirra-lirra by the river, it was asserted with the positiveness of a Hebrew chronicle, which we do not question because it is history. But we hardly have such an illusion in reading the late Idyls. We seem to be in the presence of a constructor who arranges things, of a moralist turning ancient stories with a latent purpose of decorum, of an official Englishman looking about for old confirmations of modern sociology, of a salaried laureate inventing a prototype of Prince Albert. The singleness ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... invariably a great man; he writes in a language which compels him to think; it is otherwise in other countries'—and so on, and so on. Then, to prove your case, draw a comparison between Rabener, the German satirical moralist, and La Bruyere. Nothing gives a critic such an air as an apparent familiarity with foreign literature. Kant ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... governed states of Europe. I believe, therefore, that Java may fairly claim to be the finest tropical island in the world, and equally interesting to the tourist seeking after new and beautiful scenes; to the naturalist who desires to examine the variety and beauty of tropical nature; or to the moralist and the politician who want to solve the problem of how man may be best governed ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... always been a chief proclivity of our race. The earliest of all books (Job) mentions it with sharp reproof, as though even then it had become a theme with the moralist. In olden time, wealth was even more unreliable than at the present day, especially as the mere possession of gold was enough to endanger one's life. The modern capitalist avoids this by devolving the custody of his cash on some bank and holding its stock instead of a hoard of ingots. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... great moralist, we must say that this statement argues a very limited knowledge of the resources of talk possessed by two very cultivated and very self-willed persons fairly pitted against each other in practical questions; ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... in private; but this was enough. It had broken up that confidence, unexpressed, but always a holy principle in both, which had so long held those two souls together, spite of everything that ought to have kept them apart, and did keep them apart, completely as the most rigid moralist ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... you will preach to me a long sermon about what I have just written, and so will you, moralist: and you, stern sage: you, stoic, will frown; you, cynic, sneer; you, epicure, laugh. Well, each and all, take it your own way. I accept the sermon, frown, sneer, and laugh; perhaps you are all right: ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... eunuch meets knight; the Kazi hob-nobs with the thief; the pure and pious sit down to the same tray with the bawd and the pimp; where the professional religionist, the learned Koranist and the strictest moralist consort with the wicked magician, the scoffer and the debauchee- poet like Abu Nowas; where the courtier jests with the boor and where the sweep is bedded with the noble lady. And the characters are "finished and quickened by a few touches swift and sure as the glance ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... sociologist and moralist, was an eloquent example of the mental influence of environment; for his teachings which so delighted—or scandalised, as the case might be—the world, were merely the expression of the dreams of his ...
— Modern Saints and Seers • Jean Finot
... interest which this book excites no abstract can give a just notion. So sad and dark a story is scarcely to be found in any work of fiction; and we are little disposed to envy the moralist who can ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... so dismal as it might seem. The Grande Duchesse of Gerolstein, the cheeriest moralist who ever occupied a throne, announces just before the curtain falls, "Quand on n'a pas ce qu'on aime, il faut aimer ce qu'on a." But how much easier it is to love what you have when you never imagined anything better! The bulk of the good people of Madrid have never left their ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... {28} scarcely gives leisure to the moralist to say so much, but that he (laden with old mouse-eaten records, authorizing {29} himself, for the most part, upon other histories, whose greatest authorities are built upon the notable foundation of hearsay, having much ado to ...
— A Defence of Poesie and Poems • Philip Sidney
... vein which exactly met the contemporary taste. The success was no doubt due to some really brilliant qualities, but I need not here ask in what precise rank he should be placed, as an author or a moralist. His significance for us is simple. The Night Thoughts, as he tells us, was intended to supply an omission in Pope's Essay on Man. Pope's deistical position excluded any reference to revealed religion, to posthumous rewards and penalties, ...
— English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century • Leslie Stephen
... at the wickedness of her companion; and, as they walked home together she tried to make her see the enormity of her offense, and give her some better views of her duty to her fellow-beings. Ann heard her in silence and with humility, and the little moralist hoped the event would result in good ...
— Poor and Proud - or The Fortunes of Katy Redburn • Oliver Optic
... moralist in man— Even Bohemian— Feathers the pen and nerves the archer too. Not dear decoying art, But the crushed, loving heart, Makes the young life to ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... sacred, when experience affords parallels and analogies. If much which may overwhelm when it shall happen can be foreseen, the prescient statesman and moralist may provide defensive measures to break the waters, whose streams they cannot always direct; and the venerable Hooker has profoundly observed, that "the best things have been overthrown, not so much by puissance and might of adversaries, as ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... intention was, on landing in England, to begin a periodical, and to keep apart from persons of extravagant views. I was not a Christian, nor did I, at the time, suppose I should ever become one; but I was an earnest moralist, and I had become more moderate in my ideas both on religious and political subjects. And I was, to some extent, prepared to receive fresh light. I had got an impression,—I had had it for some time before I left America,—that my mind was not in a thoroughly ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... for "The Magnetic Lady," who, in her bounty, draws to her personages of differing humours to reconcile them in the end according to the alternative title, or "Humours Reconciled." These last plays of the old dramatist revert to caricature and the hard lines of allegory; the moralist is more than ever present, the satire degenerates into personal lampoon, especially of his sometime friend, Inigo Jones, who appears unworthily to have used his influence at court against the broken-down old poet. And now ...
— Cynthia's Revels • Ben Jonson
... the beauty-loving Greek an impossibility, although he was equally conscious of the demands of reason and of morality. Thus it happened that art, which, on the purely hedonistic hypothesis, had been treated as a beautiful courtezan, became in the hands of the moralist, a pedagogue. Aristophanes and Strabo, and above all Aristotle, dwell upon the didactic and moralistic possibility of poetry. For Plutarch, poetry seems to have been a sort of preparation for philosophy, a twilight to which the eyes should grow accustomed, before emerging into ...
— Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic • Benedetto Croce
... nature and revive feeling, or sets forth a sentiment which human nature entertains, so that it shall be turned to better account. This involves the field which song has it in its power to cultivate and improve. But neither the pure moralist, nor the accomplished critic, must expect a very great deal to be done on this field at once. The song-writer has difficulties to contend with, both in regard to those by whom he would have his songs sung, and the airs to which he writes them. If in the latter case he would willingly ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume VI - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... Beer, made of barley, was also drunk very largely, and this beverage is heartily commended by the early writers. Indeed, the wine and beer-bibber was so common an offender against the dignity of the nation, that every moralist who arose had a word to say against him. Thus, for example, in the Maxims of Ani ...
— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall
... publication of a little volume called "Nature" gave conclusive evidence of his talent, and, followed as it was by his "Essays," "Representative Men," and "Conduct of Life," established his reputation as seer, interpreter of nature, poet and moralist—a reputation which has held its own ...
— American Men of Mind • Burton E. Stevenson
... recollection. I suppose the archdeacon would have defended this shameful plagiarism on his favourite principle of expediency. It seems to me, however, that it is high time that either the accusation be refuted, or the culprit consigned to that contempt as a man which he deserved as a moralist. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 216, December 17, 1853 • Various
... I read with indignation the plausible epithets which men use to soften their insults; and, as a moralist, I ask what is meant by such heterogeneous associations, as fair defects, amiable weaknesses, etc.? If there is but one criterion of morals, but one archetype for man, women appear to be suspended by destiny, according ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... three parts right. It will, for instance, enable a man to lead the life he needs in order to preserve his physical and mental vigour at its highest. Even from the moralist's point of view it is all round desirable, for nothing is so morally deteriorating as a life of narrow and cramped pinching, when all one's best years are spent in hungering and longing for what ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... defend the hearths and altars of his country reaches this highest of all degrees of charity. He may not have made a close analysis of the value of his sacrifice, but must we suppose that God requires of the plain soldier in the excitement of battle the methodical precision of the moralist or the theologian? Can we who revere his heroism doubt that his God welcomes him ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various
... much despised as the story of the seraglio and the handkerchief, of which I am persuaded he was the only inventor. That man has a malignant and ungenerous heart; and he is base enough to assume the mask of a moralist, in order to decry human nature, and to give a decent vent to his hatred of man and woman kind.—But I must quit this contemptible subject, on which a just indignation would render my pen so fertile, that after having fatigued you with a long letter, ...
— Lady Mary Wortley Montague - Her Life and Letters (1689-1762) • Lewis Melville
... life ultimately repose. This trite but unwearying theme, this impassioned commonplace of humanity, is the subject in every age of variation without end, from the Poet, the Rhetorician, the Fabulist, the Moralist, the Divine, and the Philosopher. All, amidst the sad vanity of their sighs and groans, labour to put on record and to establish this monotonous complaint, which needs not other record or evidence than ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... raised above the ordinary level of humanity, the ideal of happiness may be realized in death and misery. This may be the state which the reason deliberately approves, and which the utilitarian as well as every other moralist may be bound ...
— The Republic • Plato
... the doctor's duty to give friendly advice to every one who consults him on sexual questions, without posing as a judge or a moralist. He should never frighten or reprimand the poor hypochondriac who blames himself for masturbation, nor sexual perverts of any kind, unless, of course, they are absolutely dangerous, such as sadists. He should, on the contrary, calm their fears and ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... of the Evangelicals Tillotson was in great disfavour. It is not a little remarkable that a divine who had been constantly extolled as a very pattern of Christian piety and Christian wisdom should by them be systematically decried as little better than a heathen moralist. ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... volumes of sermons. 'It is curious to see,' says Hazlitt, rather naively, 'how the same subject is treated by two such different authors as Shakespeare and Wycherley.' Macaulay's remark about the same coincidence is more to the point. 'Wycherley borrows Viola,' says that vigorous moralist, 'and Viola forthwith becomes a pander of the basest sort.' That is literally true. Indeed, Hazlitt's love for the dramatists of the Restoration is something of a puzzle, except so far as it is explained by early associations. Even then it is hard to explain the sympathy which Hazlitt, the lover ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... emotion and originality of thought in the individual into a straight-jacket from its earliest infancy; or to shape every human being according to one pattern; not into a well-rounded individuality, but into a patient work slave, professional automaton, tax-paying citizen, or righteous moralist. If one, nevertheless, meets with real spontaneity (which, by the way, is a rare treat,) it is not due to our method of rearing or educating the child: the personality often asserts itself, regardless of official and family barriers. Such a discovery should be celebrated as ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 2, April 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various
... of frowning, whenever his name was mentioned, I was given to understand, could now smile; and two or three of the most severe among the Albany moralists, were heard to say that, "after all, there was some good about that Guert Ten Eyck." The reader will not require to be told, that a high-school moralist, in a place as retired and insulated as Albany, must necessarily be a being that became subject to a very severe code. Morality, as I understand the matter, has a good deal of convention about it. There is town-morality and country-morality, all over the world, as they tell me. ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... which idealism can grow, bud, blossom, and bear glorious fruit,—then idealism is hopelessly a lost cause. If it be not possible to promote things ideally good through these very forces of commercial and industrial life, then the outlook is a gloomy one for the social moralist ...
— The business career in its public relations • Albert Shaw
... great that adequate editorial interpretation is obviously impossible. All the more insistently does this heterogeneous picture of American life demand the impartial interpretation of the historian, the imaginative transcription of the novelist. Humorist and moralist, preacher and mob orator and social essayist, shop-talk and talk over the tea-cup or over the pipe, and the far more illuminating instruction of events, are fashioning day by day the infinitely delicate processes of our national self-assessment. ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry
... the question, that no clergyman ought to have so much as a thousand a year; for, if he had, he would be sure to neglect his duty. You remember what Dr. Johnson said to a woman who expressed some opinion or other upon a matter she did not understand. "Madam," said the moralist, "before expressing your opinion, you should consider what your opinion is worth." But this shaft would have glanced harmlessly from off the panoply of the stupid and self-complacent old lady of whom I am thinking. It ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... formed rather by the modes of thought they have learned to adopt than by any proofs they have tested; not by argumentation about a subject, but by the way of looking at it. The moralist regards all creation as the work of a personal God, a theatre of moral ends, a just Providence watching over the parts, and the conscious immortality of the actors an inevitable accompaniment. The physicist contemplates ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... remain the same; and the reader might derive the same benefit from them as from the sublime and impressive truths conveyed in the Vision of Mirza or the Tablet of Cebes. So much even from a very partial acquaintance with the works of Swedenborg, I can venture to assert; that as a moralist Swedenborg is above all praise; and that as a naturalist, psychologist, and theologian, he has strong and varied claims on the gratitude and admiration of the professional and philosophical ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... produce, at this moment, peculiar and irremediable mischief. The style of composition, as we have already hinted, is almost new in this country: it is less offensive than the old fashion of obscenity; and for these reasons, perhaps, is less likely to excite the suspicion of the moralist, or to become the object of precaution to those who watch over the morals of the young and inexperienced. We certainly have known it a permitted study, where performances, infinitely less ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... in the mountain and the tree, it may have no ethical significance at all, only a symbolical meaning. The best art is inspired more by an intellectual force than by a vital sympathy. Of course to succeed as a novelist in England to-day, one must have a dash of the moralist, because an English audience is far more preoccupied with moral ideals than with either intellectual or artistic ideals. The reading public desires that love should be loyal rather than passionate; it thinks ultimate ...
— The Altar Fire • Arthur Christopher Benson
... private feelings, but he must never betray official duty. If Churchill, perceiving the frantic course of his master, had withdrawn from his service, and then either taken no part in the revolution which followed, or even appeared in arms against him, the most scrupulous moralist could have discovered nothing reprehensible in his conduct. History has in every age applauded the virtue, while it has commiserated the anguish, of the elder Brutus, who sacrificed his sons to the perhaps too rigorous laws of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... their full effect. Increase of years had done something for him; diligence had done much more. The ebullience of youth is now chastened into the steadfast energy of manhood; the wild enthusiast, that spurned at the errors of the world, has now become the enlightened moralist, that laments their necessity, or endeavours to find out their remedy. A corresponding alteration is visible in the external form of the work, in its plot and diction. The plot is contrived with great ingenuity, embodying the result of ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... pursued the moralist, "that civilization doesn't necessarily mean benefit to the class which ought to be considered first. But that's another question. It ought to benefit ...
— Denzil Quarrier • George Gissing
... with Mr. Bevan, however, and even that with Lord Houghton, were but minor experiences as compared with another meeting of a similar yet contrasted kind. At the time of which I speak there was one British author whose influence as a philosophic moralist eclipsed that of any of his contemporaries. This writer was Carlyle. His fame was then at its highest, and the moral consciousness of ultrapolite drawing rooms was being stirred to its well-dressed ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock
... desired to jump so nigh with the Hebrew, that it doth erewhile deform the vein of the English, the proprieties of that language and ours being in some speeches so much dissemblable." But with Horace Drant pursues a different course. As a moralist it is justifiable for him to translate Horace because the Latin poet satirizes that wickedness which Jeremiah mourned over. Horace's satire, however, is not entirely applicable to conditions in England; "he ...
— Early Theories of Translation • Flora Ross Amos
... Milton, Virgil, Pope. A poet herself, she discovered that these had more power than controversialists to strengthen her religious convictions, as well as to enlarge her mind. Above all, the writings of the poet-moralist, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, helped her towards resolving the question that occupied her, of her true vocation in life, now that her determination to take the veil was ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... desperadoes that live on earth. They only knew that I came from the Mission ship, and they passed the word. Every rowdy that came up was warned, and one poor rough, who chanced to blurt out a very common and very nasty Billingsgate word, was silenced by a moralist, who observed, "Cheese it. Don't cher see the Mission ship bloke?" I watched like a cat, and I soon saw that the ordinary hurricane curses were restrained on my account, simply because I came from the vessel where all ...
— A Dream of the North Sea • James Runciman
... true aesthete tend to prefer, even like the austerest moralist, the delights which, being of the spirit, are most independent of circumstances and most in the ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... died out slowly in this kingdom. Even a great moralist like Dr. Johnson had something to say in its defence, and Sir Walter Scott, who might well have laughed to scorn any imputation of cowardice, was prepared to accept a challenge in his old age for a statement he had made ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... with a certain remorse. He could not understand how he could be at the same time so tormented, and have such a good appetite. Luckily he remembered reading in the works of some moralist or other that sorrow sharpened hunger wonderfully. This maxim set his conscience at rest, and the result was, that the unfortunate pullet was eaten up to ...
— The Conspirators - The Chevalier d'Harmental • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... moralist than I would have had no pity, and would have hurled on her all the weight of those bitter truths of which she was so ignorant; would have shown her that pit of earthly scorn upon whose brink she stood; would have torn down all that perfect, credulous faith of hers, which could ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... war against Germany; to such a purpose, such a clause, as urgentibus imperii fatis, were quite adverse. Least of all was it written for the mere pastime and amusement of Roman readers. It breathes the spirit at once of the earnest patriot, and the high-toned moralist. ...
— Germania and Agricola • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... A moralist might here explain The rashness of the Cretan youth;[1] Describe his fall into the main, And from a fable ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... inspect further, or touch upon the Moralist's Immorality, for I dare ingage it is not altogether impossible to prove, the Pulpiteer may be tainted a little as well as the Poetaster, let us see whether we can find him guilty of the first Charge against us, which is Immodesty; ...
— Essays on the Stage • Thomas D'Urfey and Bossuet
... To the moralist I know he might have served as a figure of sinful discontent, but that is because it is the habit of moralists to ignore material circumstances,—if indeed one may speak of a recent meal as a circumstance,—with Mr. Polly circum. Drink, indeed, our teachers will criticise ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... Laid on the conscience of the Man of Law Whom blindfold Justice lends her eyes to see Truth in the scale that holds his promised fee. What! Has not every lie its truthful side, Its honest fraction, not to be denied? Per contra,—ask the moralist,—in sooth Has not a lie its share in every truth? Then what forbids an honest man to try To find the truth that lurks in every lie, And just as fairly call on truth to yield The lying fraction in its breast concealed? So the worst rogue shall claim a ready friend His modest virtues boldly to ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... Turgenev and Tolstoi is that Turgenev was always an artist; Tolstoi always a moralist. It was not necessary for him to abandon novels, and write tracts; for in every novel his moral teaching was ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... flatterers of the disgraced minister running to see him dragged with a hook through the streets, and to have a kick at his carcase before it is hurled into the Tiber. It must be owned too that in the concluding passage the Christian moralist has not made the most of his advantages, and has fallen decidedly short of the sublimity of his Pagan model. On the other hand, Juvenal's Hannibal must yield to Johnson's Charles; and Johnson's vigorous and pathetic enumeration of the miseries of a literary life ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... —Soon as these words had parted from his lips, Words impious, and insulting to high heaven, His earthly grandeur faded—then all tongues Grew clamorous and bold. The day of Jemshid Passed into gloom, his brightness all obscured. What said the Moralist? "When thou wert a king Thy subjects were obedient, but whoever Proudly neglects the worship of his God, Brings desolation on his house and home." —And when he marked the insolence of his people, He knew the wrath of Heaven had been provoked, And ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... i., p. 481.) of the origin of Johnson's "From China to Peru," where, however, I sincerely believe our great moralist intended not so much to borrow the phrase as to profit by its temporary notoriety and popularity, reminds me of a conversation, many years since, with the late William Wordsworth, at which I happened to be present, and which now derives ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 40, Saturday, August 3, 1850 - A Medium Of Inter-Communication For Literary Men, Artists, Antiquaries, • Various
... which alone would have enabled them, as it did Burns, to compete with the literary savants, who, though for the most part of inferior genius, have the help of information and appliances, from which they were shut out. Judging them, as the true critic, like the true moralist, is bound to do, "according to what they had, not according to what they had not," they are men who, with average advantages, might have been famous in their day. God thought it better for them to "hide them in his tabernacle from the strife of tongues;" ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... this connection had taken place. His equal temper, mild disposition, and politeness of manners, might have insensibly softened the harshness of Johnson, and infused into him those more delicate charities, those petites morales, in which, it must be confessed, our great moralist was more deficient than his best friends could fully justify. Dr. Adams paid Johnson this high compliment. He said to me at Oxford, in 1776, 'I was his nominal tutor[238]; but he was above my mark.' When I repeated it to Johnson, his eyes flashed with grateful satisfaction, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... into a tolerable harmony with the universe. By aiming at too much, by dismissing collateral aids, by extending itself to the farthest verge of the conceivable and possible, it loses its elasticity and vigour, its impulse and its direction. The moralist can no more do without the intermediate use of rules and principles, without the 'vantage ground of habit, without the levers of the understanding, than the mechanist can discard the use of wheels and pulleys, and perform every thing by simple motion. If the ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt |
