"Rational" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... way in which a civilized man and a civilized woman may approach one another. Passionate desire is not enough. What is called love is not enough. Pledges, rational considerations, all these things are worthless. All these things are compatible with hate. The primary essential is friendship, clear understanding, absolute confidence. Then within that condition, in that elect relationship, love is permissible, mating, ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... therefore we are advocates for that admiration which subsists upon ignorance, and that pleasure which arises from hearing what we do not understand, the Poet must descend from this supposed height; and, in order to excite rational sympathy, he must express himself as other men express themselves. To this it may be added, that while he is only selecting from the real language of men, or, which amounts to the same thing, composing accurately in the spirit of such selection, he is treading upon safe ground, and we know ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... the sultan of Menangkabau to the father of the present sultan of Moco-moco, and apparently written about fifty years ago, was communicated to me by Mr. Alexander Dalrymple, and though it is in part a repetition I esteem it too curious to hesitate about inserting it. The style is much more rational than that of the foregoing. "Praised be Almighty God! Sultan Gagar Alum the great and noble King, whose extensive power reacheth unto the limits of the wide ocean; unto whom God grants whatever he desires, and over ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... training, but it was not given to her; and though she made but a lame attempt to follow Jane's footsteps, and acquired only a superficial knowledge of what her sister was the perfect mistress of, her uncle believed that, bad as she was, she would have been much worse if she had not been forced into rational studies. Though she was not a marvel of solidity, she still had as good a knowledge of accounts, general information, history, and science, as is possessed by many boys who get on very well in business or in professions, when once set ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence
... will at all resemble our present existence, is another question; but that the mind is eternal seems as probable as that the body is not so. Of course I here venture upon the question without recurring to revelation, which, however, is at least as rational a solution of it as any other. A material resurrection seems strange and even absurd, except for purposes of punishment; and all punishment which is to revenge rather than correct must be morally ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. 6 (of 6) - With his Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... fierro or iron mark of the Spanish cattle owner, and his venta or sale-brand to another had become common law all over the Southwest when the Anglo-Saxon first struck that region. The Saxon accepted these customs as wise and rational, and soon they were the American law all over ...
— The Story of the Outlaw - A Study of the Western Desperado • Emerson Hough
... these words are to be retained in their true meaning. 'Necessary' signifies divine order. New obedience is necessary and is a debt for the very reason that it is an immutable divine order that the rational creature obeys God." (C. R. ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... the many blessings" they enjoy, and "beg leave to approach the throne, and express our indignation at, and abhorrence of, the measures adopted by our unhappy and deluded fellow-subjects in America, in direct opposition to law and justice, and to every rational idea of civilization;" "with still greater indignation, if possible, we behold this rebellious disposition, which so fatally obtains on the other side of the Atlantic, fomented and cherished by a set of men in Great Britain;" that the "deluded children may quickly return ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... denying the supernatural origin of disease, by his method of diagnosis, by the importance he attached to air and diet, by his discriminating use of drugs, and by the simplicity of his system generally, had placed Medicine on a rational basis. In the six hundred years' space which elapsed before the appearance of Galen, Medicine was broken up into many rival schools. The Dogmatici and the Empirici for many years wrangled undisturbed, but shortly after the ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... Spain after Cervantes, the science of mind, and particularly mental pathology, has made some steps forward on crutches furnished by the medical profession. The treatment of insanity is on a more rational and efficient footing. The statistician collects, and invites the moral philosopher to collate, the records of crime. The naturalist studies the life of the lower animals, and gives the coup de grace to the uncompromising distinction drawn ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... "It is more rational in its plan than some I have heard of, since it takes in your nurse and your nurse's maid. Will this precious doctor dine ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... $10,000,000, and keeping in circulation never more than one and one-half dollars for every dollar in specie. When to this it is added that the bills are not only everywhere receivable in Government dues, but that the Government itself would be bound for their ultimate redemption, no rational doubt can exist that the paper which the exchequer would furnish would readily enter into general circulation and be maintained at all times at or above par with gold and silver, thereby realizing the great ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Tyler - Section 2 (of 3) of Volume 4: John Tyler • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... they may have thought an old man's forgetfulness of present things and his habit of communing with the past was insanity. For all that he was a plucky, independent old fellow, with a grim purpose that was certainly rational." ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte
... place, radicalism would have driven the border States into the Confederacy, every Southern man back to his kinsmen, and divided the North itself into civil conflict. I have sought to guide and control public opinion into the ways on which depended our life. This rational flexibility of policy you and your fellow radicals have been pleased to call ...
— The Clansman - An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan • Thomas Dixon
... do. [For with Conybeare and Howson (Life and Letters of S. Paul, ii. 491), to eject the words "at Ephesus" from the text of Ephes. i. 1, and actually to substitute in their room the words "in Laodicea,"—is plainly abhorrent to every principle of rational criticism. The remarks of C. and H. on this subject (pp. 486 ff) have been faithfully met and sufficiently disposed of by Dean Alford (vol. iii. Prolegg. pp. 13-8); who infers, "in accordance with the prevalent belief of the Church in all ages, that this ...
— The Last Twelve Verses of the Gospel According to S. Mark • John Burgon
... that wise methods of colonization, better agriculture and gardening, the development of fruit-orchards and vineyards, and above all, more rational government and equitable taxation may one day give back to Palestine something of her old prosperity and population. If the Jews really want it no doubt they can have it. Their rich men have the money and the influence; and there are enough of their poorer folk scattered ...
— Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land - Impressions of Travel in Body and Spirit • Henry Van Dyke
... another dress, with an embroidery of images apparently Asiatic. From all this, if it be satisfactorily proved, we may infer a general union or affinity between the most distinguished inhabitants of the primitive world at the time when they deviated, as they did too early deviate, from the rational adoration of the ...
— Chips From A German Workshop, Vol. V. • F. Max Mueller
... The most rational measure consists in removing the general causes, as noted above, if this is possible. When the patient is thin and poorly nourished, give food and cod-liver oil; and if the lips and skin are pale, iron arsenate pills (one-sixteenth grain each) are to be taken three times daily for several weeks. ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume II (of VI) • Various
... distance to be our model, and to instruct us in the principles of our own tongue.... Rapid changes of language proceed from violent causes, but these causes cannot be supposed to exist in North America. It is contrary to all rational calculation that the United States will ever be conquered by any one nation speaking a different language from that of the country. Removed from the danger of corruption by conquest, our language can change only with the slow operation of the causes before mentioned, and the progress of arts and ...
— Noah Webster - American Men of Letters • Horace E. Scudder
... long been deprived of its natural Guardian and Counsellor. To be House-Father in the full sense of the word was now all the more Captain Schiller's need and duty, the longer his War-service had kept him excluded from the sacred vocation of Husband and Father. For he was throughout a rational and just man, simple, strong, expert, active for practical life, if also somewhat quick and rough. This announced itself even in the outward make and look of him; for he was of short stout stature and powerful make of limbs; ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... government; and that the same opinion prevails in the ministry and nation. They have hired their news writers to repeat this lie in their gazettes so long, that they have become the dupes of it themselves. But there is no occasion to recur to this, in order to account for their arming. A more rational purpose avowed, that purpose executed, and when executed, a solemn agreement to disarm, seem to leave no doubt that the re-establishment of the Stadtholder was their object. Yet it is possible, that having ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson
... that I have better information touching on what sustenance I need than any outsider ever can hope to have unless he breaks into me surgically. I claim that a series of rational experiments should tell any rational human how much he needs to eat and what he needs to eat in order to reduce his bulk and yet keep his powers and his bodily vigor unimpaired. I am not speaking now, understand ...
— One Third Off • Irvin S. Cobb
... "You and all your laws will never be able to put an end to poor Mr Crasweller,—and it would be a great shame if you did. You don't see it; but the feeling here in the city is becoming very strong. The people won't have it; and I must say that it is only rational that Jack should be on the same side. He is a man now, and has a right to his own opinion as well ...
— The Fixed Period • Anthony Trollope
... the kind hand of over-ruling Providence conduct us, through toils, fatigues and dangers, to Independence and Peace. If piety be the rational exercise of the human soul, if religion be not a chimera, and if the vestiges of heavenly assistance are clearly traced in those events, which mark the annals of our nation, it becomes us, on this day, in consideration of the ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume I. No. VI. June, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... comes a vehicle at a more rational pace. Mercy on us—a hearse and six horses returning leisurely from a funeral! Not improbable that the person who has just quitted it, had never, till he was a corpse, got higher than a single-horse Chay—yet no fewer than half-a-dozen ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... and when it reaches a dangerous excess upon any question the good sense of the people will furnish the corrective and bring it back within safe limits. Still, to hasten this auspicious result at the present crisis we ought to remember that every rational creature must be presumed to intend the natural consequences of his own teachings. Those who announce abstract doctrines subversive of the Constitution and the Union must not be surprised should their ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... blowing. There was sand in the mouths and nostrils of all four, and dust in their eyes. Their talk more resembled the jibbering of apes, who had unwisely intruded into a snuff shop, than the conversation of four rational beings. ...
— The Boy Slaves • Mayne Reid
... laugh." Coleridge, I know not what suffering scenes you have gone through at Bristol—my life has been somewhat diversified of late. The 6 weeks that finished last year and began this your very humble servant spent very agreeably in a mad house at Hoxton—I am got somewhat rational now, and don't bite any one. But mad I was—and many a vagary my imagination played with me, enough to make ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... imagined until quite recent times that the pass referred to was the well-known Usui Toge on the Nakasendo road; but Dr. Kume has shown that such a supposition is inconsistent with any rational itinerary of Yamato-dake's march, and that the sea in question cannot be seen from that defile. The pass mentioned in the Chronicles is another of the same name not far from the Hakone region, and the term "Azuma" "had always been used to designate the Eastern Provinces." Throughout the Records ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... out with them; and a Dutchman will forgive you any other superiority, sooner than he will overlook your having the best team. That last man had a spur in his head, moreover, and is driving his cattle, at this moment, more like a spook than like a humane and rational being, I dare say he asked if we owned ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... these movements because he sees they would be of no use without food to chew; but this explanation would scarcely apply to the lower sorts of animal, and besides, you do not have to check your jaws by any such rational considerations. They simply do not start to chew except when food is in the mouth. Well, then, you say, chewing is a response to the presence of food in the mouth; and taking food into the mouth is a response to the stimulus of actually present food. The response does not occur unless ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... spoke to ear, or ever lip kissed back to lip, so true and enduring a betrothal as has sometimes been signed in the meeting of two palms, when not a word had been spoken and when neither of the pair had one rational thought ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... obstructive and the other not. It may mean the deliberate suppression or mutilation of an idea, in order to make it congruous with the traditional idea or the current prejudice on the given subject, whatever that may be. Or else it may mean a rational acquiescence in the fact that the bulk of your contemporaries are not yet prepared either to embrace the new idea, or to change their ways of living in conformity to it. In the one case, the compromiser rejects the highest truth, or dissembles his ...
— On Compromise • John Morley
... infantile diseases were over, when I was just becoming very intelligent (the best company possible, Mrs. Bundle declared), when I wore my clothes out reasonably, and had exchanged the cries which exercise one's lungs in infancy for rational conversation by the nursery fireside, I should be drawn away from nurse and nursery almost entirely. It was right and natural, but it was hard. Nurse Bundle felt it so, but she never complained. When she felt it most, she only said, "It's all just as it should be." And so ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... the woman," he said, "throughout the whole correspondence, is too much the superior. She leaves the man far behind. She is so collected, so composed, so constantly mistress of herself, so unbiased by her passions, so rational, and so dignified, that I would even recommend her as an example to any young woman in ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... projector in an outer pouch of the suit where I could instantly reach it. This was more rational; we had a fighting chance now. The fear which had ...
— Brigands of the Moon • Ray Cummings
... proofs by the fact that the tomb in which the body was laid had been found empty. There is even more weighty evidence of the resurrection; but those who deny this supremely important event must give first some rational account of this ...
— The Gospel of Luke, An Exposition • Charles R. Erdman
... brief keeping. No, she would never accept his terms and face the world with him as his wife. And so he must give her up. For he believed that, in him, the instinct of moral law had been too carefully developed ever to be deliberately ignored; he still believed marriage to be not only a rational social procedure, not only a human compromise and a divine convention, but the only possible sanctuary where love might dwell, and remain, and permanently ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... in a moment the whole herd rushed into the water with a degree of unreserved confidence, so opposite to the caution and timidity which had marked their previous movements, that nothing will ever persuade me that there was not rational and preconcerted co-operation throughout the whole party, and a degree of responsible authority exercised by ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... the authority of a great Dame; the motive betrays itself in the thirteenth chapter, where Polycarp is represented as sending several of the Ignatian Epistles to the Philippians along with his own letter. This theory is at all events intelligible; and, so far as I can see, it is the only rational theory of which ...
— Essays on "Supernatural Religion" • Joseph B. Lightfoot
... they were absolutely foreign to us. Man's complaint against nature is that he has to acquire most of his necessaries by his own efforts. Yes, but his efforts are not in vain; he is reaping success every day, and that shows there is a rational connection between him and nature, for we never can make anything our own except that which ...
— Sadhana - The Realisation of Life • Rabindranath Tagore
... our own, national policy means public conviction, else it is but as sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal. But public conviction is a very different thing from popular impression, differing by all that separates a rational process, resulting in manly resolve, from a weakly sentiment that finds occasional hysterical utterance. The Monroe Doctrine, as popularly apprehended and indorsed, is a rather nebulous generality, ...
— The Interest of America in Sea Power, Present and Future • A. T. Mahan
... within the reach of every man who is regardless of his health, his money, and his company. By the contagion of example I was sometimes seduced; but the better habits, which I had formed at Lausanne, induced me to seek a more elegant and rational society; and if my search was less easy and successful than I might have hoped, I shall at present impute the failure to the disadvantages of my situation and character. Had the rank and fortune of my parents given them an annual ...
— Memoirs of My Life and Writings • Edward Gibbon
... tending two or three horses, a cow or two, and sawing wood for stoves, etc., while still attending school. For this I was compensated by the fact that there was never any scolding or punishing by my parents; no objection to rational enjoyments, such as fishing, going to the creek a mile away to swim in summer, taking a horse and visiting my grandparents in the adjoining county, fifteen miles off, skating on the ice in winter, or taking a horse and sleigh when there was ...
— Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete • Ulysses S. Grant
... its own happiness. Ottilie had not given up Edward—how could she? Although Charlotte, wisely enough, in spite of her conviction to the contrary, assumed it as a thing of course, and resolutely took it as decided that a quiet rational regard was possible between her husband and Ottilie. How often, however, did not Ottilie remain at nights, after bolting herself into her room, on her knees before the open box, gazing at the birthday presents, of which as yet she had not touched a ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... if barbers were unco scarce cattle among the howes of the Lammermoor hills. Having a general experience of human nature, I saw that I would have something to do towards bringing him into a state of rational civilization; but, considering his opportunities, he had been well educated, and I liked his appearance on ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... manner gradually acquired. But to discover how such habits had been acquired was perplexing in no small degree. The whole subject had to be viewed under a new aspect, and each expression demanded a rational explanation. This belief led me to attempt the present work, however imperfectly it may ...
— The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals • Charles Darwin
... struggle for existence ending in the survival of the fittest" to Otare, he replied that it was an excellent principle for snakes; but he considered it beneath the dignity and wisdom of men to struggle for a life which could be maintained by the labour of love, and ought to be devoted to rational or ...
— A Trip to Venus • John Munro
... infectious diseases with immense benefit. Research was naturally turned to this subject, for it was evident that the processes by which the protection of the body was brought about must be known before there could be a really rational method of treatment directed towards the artificial induction of such processes, or hastening and strengthening those which were taking place. Previous to knowledge of the bacteria, their mode of life, their methods of infection and knowledge of the defences of the body, ...
— Disease and Its Causes • William Thomas Councilman
... ingratitude, Colonel Newcome, want of proper spirit, to allow my boys to accept money. Mind, I make no allusions. When they go to school they receive a sovereign a-piece from their father, and a shilling a week, which is ample pocket-money. When they are at home, I desire that they may have rational amusements: I send them to the Polytechnic with Professor Hickson, who kindly explains to them some of the marvels of science and the wonders of machinery. I send them to the picture-galleries and the British Museum. I go with them myself to the delightful lectures at the institution ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... by Ben Brace to his protege was simple, as it was also rational. The sword-fish had been charging into a shoal of albacores. Partly blinded by the velocity of its impetuous rush, and partly by its instinct of extreme voracity,—perhaps amounting to a passion, it had seen nothing of the raft until its long weapon struck the plank, piercing the latter through ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid
... not reinforced by a reason breeds distrust, and when until he can intelligently defend an ideal he will hesitate to give it his allegiance. Morality, to be depended upon, must be not a mere matter of breeding and convention, or of impulse and emotion, but the result of rational insight and conscious resolve. To many people morality seems nothing but convention, or an arbitrary tyranny, or a mysterious and awful necessity, something extraneous to their own desires, from which they would like to escape. To be able to refute these skeptics, expose the sophisms ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... Evidently this rational advice was not taken, for it is repeated by Coutault in 1473. Redemption of the mortgages, "if your affairs can afford it," is the counsel given by the chamber of accounts at Dijon, though this sage board adds that they were well aware that in the ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam
... which has the support of Werndly,[42] is so far simple and rational that it seeks the etymology of this word in the traditions of the Malays and in books written by themselves. Thus, in a work which has the greatest authority among them, and which is entitled Sul[-a]lates-sal[-a]tin, or Sej[-a]rat mal[-a]yu, the ...
— A Manual of the Malay language - With an Introductory Sketch of the Sanskrit Element in Malay • William Edward Maxwell
... from the soul of nature, 670-u. Intelligence overruling the principle of necessity, 681-l. Intelligence produced Christ and the Spirit to restore the Eons to—,560-m. Intelligence source of the oil of anointing, 267-l. Intelligence supreme is necessarily rational, 733-u. Intelligence, Supreme, type of that manifested in man, 254-m. Intelligence symbolized by the Pentagram or five-pointed Star, 790-l. Intelligence, Tabunah, represented by the Hebrew letters, 800-m. Intelligence, the commencement, revelation cf Divinity, the ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... true woman, by which is meant now and always that she preferred to allow a man to digest his dinner before she tried to bring him to a rational opinion. But in this case her hands were tied. The Cords dined at eight—or sometimes a little later, and Ben's boat left for New York at half past nine, so that it would be utterly impossible to postpone the discussion of her future until after dinner. ...
— The Beauty and the Bolshevist • Alice Duer Miller
... in old age out of his income. That's the advanced view—our view. Besides, if you had married me, I might have turned out a drunkard, a criminal, an imbecile, a horror to you; and you couldn't have released yourself. Too big a risk, you see. That's the rational view—our view. Accordingly, you reserved the right to leave me at any time if you found our companionship incompatible with—what was the expression you used?—with your full development as a human being: I think that was ...
— The Philanderer • George Bernard Shaw
... Fashion you make war, With querulous Book, and quaint Bazaar, Good Ladies of the Higher Light! A Turkish Tea-gown, loose or tight, Won't win us to the Rational Cult; Japanese skirts do but insult Our elder instincts, to which Reason Is nothing more nor less than treason. Your "muddy weather costume" moves us No more than satire, which reproves us Ad nauseam, and for whose rebuff We never care one pinch of snuff. No, Ladies HARBERTON and COFFIN. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 100, April 25, 1891 • Various
... matters which, with us, are thought susceptible of positive proof (such as the taste and quality of cooking, or the mental abilities of a fellow-citizen) the Monomotapans establish their judgment in a transcendental or super-rational manner. The cooking in a restaurant or hotel is with them excellent in proportion, not to the taste of the viands subjected to it, but to the rental of the premises. And when a man desires the most delicious food he does not consider where he has tasted such food in the past, ...
— On Something • H. Belloc
... thereof, of a bunch of forget-me-nots she was to keep alive if she would have her mother live, and so many other marvellous things, that her distressed father opines that "the poor child would be rational enough, if she had not read so many fairy-books."—John Neal, Goody Gracious ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... want with me?" he asked, with astonishing indifference. Lieut. D'Hubert could not imagine that in the innocence of his heart and simplicity of his conscience Lieut. Feraud took a view of his duel in which neither remorse nor yet a rational apprehension of consequences had any place. Though he had no clear recollection how the quarrel had originated (it was begun in an establishment where beer and wine are drunk late at night), he had not the slightest doubt of being himself ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad
... convinced that these feelings are general among great multitudes of the more thoughtful and intelligent adherents of Christianity. Religion rests with them upon a certain intellectual acquiescence, or upon the equipoise of rational probabilities, or on the compromise of intellectual hesitations. Their tastes are gratified by the normal forms of worship, and their sentiments are softly stirred and stimulated. But when the voice of the orator dies upon the porches of the ear, and the ...
— The Empire of Love • W. J. Dawson
... acknowledged intelligence and reputation in their own branch of life, both at home and abroad. I therefore desire as respectfully, but also as emphatically and as publicly, as I can, to put on record the fact, as one admitting to my mind of no rational ground for dispute, that there exists every manner of contemporary evidence to prove that Shakspere, the householder of Stratford-on-Avon, wrote with his own hand, and exclusively by the light of his only genius (merely to paraphrase the contemporary inscription on his tomb in Stratford-on-Avon ...
— Bacon is Shake-Speare • Sir Edwin Durning-Lawrence
... to waver between this world and the next. He had intervals of consciousness in which he recognized the captains and Elsie, but these rational moments were few and, although he talked a little, he never mentioned recent events ...
— Cap'n Eri • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... a name, the first rational use to make of the charming possession is to get astride of it, as a witch upon her broomstick, and whisk and scamper over half the kingdoms of the earth. Talk of bills of exchange!—letters of credit!—we can put our name to a whole book, and it will pass—it will pass. The idea ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... laughing, "it depends upon the stock of practical wisdom in the heads; for two fools, you know, Louis, will hardly form one rational plan." ...
— Lost in the Backwoods • Catharine Parr Traill
... Each brings to the examination of the text a preconceived notion, as it were; and it reconciles text and preconceived notion sometimes by traditional, sometimes by arbitrary, methods, often more ingenious than rational. The Peshat, on the contrary, subordinates its own ideas to the text, wishes to see in the text only what is actually there, and ...
— Rashi • Maurice Liber
... they had perceived it during the night, but he had seemed quite rational since daybreak. They were shocked, therefore, at this sudden outbreak, and tried to ...
— A Desert Drama - Being The Tragedy Of The "Korosko" • A. Conan Doyle
... his lips, "let's go in. If what Willows said is true, the whole place may blow any minute now, but I'm not asking for volunteers. Nobody will be any safer up here than they will down there, and we have to do a job. Besides, Willows wasn't completely rational. Nobody would put on a vac suit and run away like that if he was in his right mind. So we can discount a lot of what he said when we picked him up ...
— The Bramble Bush • Gordon Randall Garrett
... partly because some recent popular tracts of Canon Rawlinson, Mr. R.S. Pattison, and others, have already made the ordinary reader familiar with the main outlines of the subject; and still more because, be the views of archaeologists what they may, it is impossible for any rational person to contend either that they can be reduced to anything like unity among themselves, or that they lead to any conclusion favourable to the belief in the self-caused and ...
— Creation and Its Records • B.H. Baden-Powell
... however, feels himself obliged to restrict himself in this matter to a mere summary; and, indeed, it is English physicists and engineers who have taken the technology of electricity out of the region of empiricism and have placed it on a scientific and rational basis. Moreover, they are also taking the lead in the progress which is being accomplished in this branch of knowledge, and are best qualified to determine its true bearings. When an electric current, with an intensity, i, is produced, either by chemical ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 275 • Various
... contents of Southern Buddhism; and, as my object is never to write an extended essay on the subject, I resist the temptation to wander off into amplifications of details which, however interesting to the student of comparative religion, are useless in a rational ...
— The Buddhist Catechism • Henry S. Olcott
... immortality of the soul had not a rational leg to stand on. The anima, or spirit, being merely the product of certain elements combined in life, was wiped out when those elements dissolved their union in death. It was the flame of a candle blown out. Yet ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... made that the two preceding verses (verses 28 and 29) must needs form a part of our Lord's discourse,—which it is perceived flows on unbroken from v. 24 to v. 35. This has been seen already by some[160], though denied by others. But the fact does not admit of rational doubt; though it is certainly not as yet generally known. It is not generally known, I mean, that the Church has recovered a piece of knowledge with which she was once familiar[161], but which for many centuries she has forgotten, viz. that thirty-two words ...
— The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels • John Burgon
... volcano in St. Vincent has broken out at last,' said the wise man, 'and this is the dust of it.' So he quieted his household and his Negroes, lighted his candles, and went to his scientific books, in that delight, mingled with an awe not the less deep because it is rational and self-possessed, with which he, like other men of science, looked at the wonders of this ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... There is, then, in the human soul a natural disposition to religiousness or piety; and the history of all ages testifies that no people ever existed, who, however rude and uncultivated, has not had some presentiment of the relations which bind the rational creature to its Creator. ...
— A Guide for the Religious Instruction of Jewish Youth • Isaac Samuele Reggio
... a mere beauty, dooms dozens to grieve; Who marries an heiress, leaves hundreds undone; Who bears off an actress (she never took leave), Deprives a whole city of rational fun. But farewell the glances and nods of St. Nisbett; We list for her short ringing laughter in vain, And yet—bereaved London!—What think you of this bet? A hundred to one ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... sleeping, in a direction towards the sleeping-place of the natives, clearly indicated that it was not until he had arisen from his sleep, and had been closely pressing upon them, that they had fired the fatal shot. Such appeared to me to be the most plausible and rational explanation of this melancholy affair—I would willingly believe it to be ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... horrible atonement came a violent reaction, and out of the reaction attempts to continue in a soberer and more rational form the propitiatory ideas of the flagellants. The chief furtherers of these reforms were lay fraternities, calling themselves Disciplinati di Gesu Cristo. From the very outset these fraternities practised the singing of hymns in Italian, instead of Latin, the church language. These hymns dealt ...
— Some Forerunners of Italian Opera • William James Henderson
... a rational creature," he added then, after ringing a small bell on the table, "and accept your natural destiny. But you are lost, ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... So early was the rational answer ready for those socialistic sophisms which for so many years misled the most generous part of French intelligence. We may regret perhaps that in demolishing the vision of perfect social equality, Turgot did not show a more lively sense of the need for lessening and softening ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Turgot • John Morley
... mysterious in his counsel. All he said was as clear and rational as the day-light. But the good folk were nevertheless inclined to attribute a higher authority to him; and would desist from vice or folly for his sake, when they would not for their own sake. It was odd, indeed: this Wise Nils, the fiddler, became a great man in the valley, ...
— Boyhood in Norway • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... reference to these two is not that they are two, but that the one is the starting point of the line of which the other is the goal. The process which began when He rose from the dead, whatever view we may take of the condition of His earthly life during the forty days of parenthesis, could have no rational and intelligible ending, except the Ascension. Thus we should think of it not only as the end of a sweet friendship, but as the end of the gracious manifestation of the earthly life, the counterpart of the ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... get up any sort of a quarrel with Julian," said the doctor; "but there were others of his class less rational. Cornered as to their moral claim to their possessions, they fell back on that of their ancestors. They argued that these ancestors, assuming them to have had a right by merit to their possessions, had as an incident of that merit the right ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... high ground, they continued their course between the sand-hills and a blue inlet of the lake to the south. Some way to the right they caught sight of a whole herd of elephants, ranged in regular array like an army of rational beings, slowly ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... the poet as the orderer, the craftsman, the poets of the Fragments have a kind of artlessness (to us a very studied one, to be sure) that gave them an aura of sincerity and honesty. The poems are fragmentary in the sense that they do not follow any orderly, rational plan but seem to take the form that corresponds to the development of an emotional experience. As Macpherson told Blair they are very different from "modern, connected, ...
— Fragments Of Ancient Poetry • James MacPherson
... had not a little vanity, and was insnared, his suspicions quieted for the time. Valuing money himself supremely, it seemed most rational that father and daughter should regard him as the most eligible young man ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... to whom Jowett wrote, thirty years afterwards, that he was 'the most distinguished clergyman in the Church of England, who could do more than any one towards the great work of placing religion on a rational basis.'[9] ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... and rightly used, rational enjoyment, power, fame,—these are all worthy objects of ambition; but they are not the highest objects, and you may acquire them all without achieving true success. But if, whatever you seek, you put good will into all your actions, you are sure of the best success ...
— The New McGuffey Fourth Reader • William H. McGuffey
... a slip of my pen. But here in Goerlitz, far from the firing line, even a rational man, when he is troubled, begins to imagine things. With your talents you might have been an officer on ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... treasury, leaving the society to ravel out for lack of funds. These experiences led me to give up organizing suffrage societies, as I had learned that lecturing, writing serial stories and editorials and correspondence afforded a more rational means of spreading the light.... The only time for general, active organization is after a few devoted workers have succeeded in using the press for getting the movement squarely before the voters in the shape of ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various
... was asked to sing, He gave the different nations something national. 'Twas all the same to him—"God save the King" Or "Ca ira" according to the fashion all; His muse made increment of anything From the high lyric down to the low rational: If Pindar sang horse races, what should hinder Himself from ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... way. Sadly against her will she gave way. One morning in early March, she absented herself from her place in the class-room without even taking leave of her beloved schoolgirls, whom she had tried so hard unobtrusively to train up towards a rational understanding of the universe around them, and sat down to write a final letter of farewell to poor straight-laced kind-hearted Miss Smith-Waters. She sat down to it with a sigh; for Miss Smith-Waters, though her outlook upon the cosmos was through one ...
— The Woman Who Did • Grant Allen
... have endeavoured to be neither superfluously copious, nor scrupulously reserved, and hope that I have made my authour's meaning accessible to many who before were frighted from perusing him, and contributed something to the publick, by diffusing innocent and rational pleasure. ...
— Preface to Shakespeare • Samuel Johnson
... of what they called "third personism" occur among THEIR OWN circle, it was always kept dark—not a hint of what was going on being allowed to transpire, and even the wronged husband holding himself ready, should he meet with, or hear of, the "third person," to quote, in a mild and rational manner, the proverb, "Whom concerns it that a friend should consort with friend?" In addition, I may say that, like most of the female world of St. Petersburg, the ladies of N. were pre-eminently careful and refined in their choice of words and phrases. Never did ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... not only made things beautiful; He has made things happy; whatever misery there is in the world there is no denying that. Misery is the exception; happiness is the rule. No rational man ever heard a bird sing without feeling that the bird was happy, and that if God made that bird He made it to be happy, and He takes pleasure in its happiness, though no human ear should ever hear its song, no human heart should ...
— Daily Thoughts - selected from the writings of Charles Kingsley by his wife • Charles Kingsley
... be a sensible and rational one; but the law was opposed to it, and their worships were bound by oath to prefer the law to common sense. (I doubted myself whether dragons came within the Law, but the Justices decided that they were poundable ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... different velocities in different parts[1] of its orbit, as laid down by the law of Kepler, or whether it turns once on its axis in a month, or not, as either theory will answer for its phases, as well as for the face of the "Man in the Moon," but I will endeavor to give a more rational theory for the phenomenon ...
— Scientific American, Vol. 17, No. 26 December 28, 1867 • Various
... of artillery is quite incredible, though, twice repeated in the same terms, but it is impossible to form any rational conjecture for correcting the gross error or exaggeration in ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VI - Early English Voyages Of Discovery To America • Robert Kerr
... Weapon-Salve for the Churches Wounds, or the Divine Right of Particular Forms of Church Government Discussed and Examined. "The argument," says Bishop Burnet, "was managed with so much learning and skill that none of either side ever undertook to answer it." He also wrote Origines Sacrae, or a Rational Account of the Christian Faith, and various treatises in favor of Protestantism and against ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... city. She has not joined in the movement, but does not know but it may come to that. It is a critical moment in Miss Sedgwick's history, and it happened at this time she went to hear Dr. Mason's farewell sermon. "As usual," she says, "he gave the rational Christians an anathema. He said they had fellowship with the devil: no, he would not slander the devil, they were worse, etc." Very possibly this preaching had its proper effect upon many hearers, and they gave the "rational Christians" a wide berth, but it precipitated ...
— Daughters of the Puritans - A Group of Brief Biographies • Seth Curtis Beach
... of the high grade. Environment, culture, can do much, but they cannot make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. Neither can heredity make a silk purse out of silk; without culture and the environmental influences, without social heredity, the silk remains crude and with no special value. The aims of a rational society, which we are born a thousand years too soon to see would be twofold: to control marriage and birth so that the number of the unfit would be kept as low as possible, and then to bring fostering influences to ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... other act can possibly place him. They would thus put themselves in the track of the best guide they can follow; they would soon overtake it, become its guide in turn, and lead to the wholesome modifications wanting in that model, and necessary to constitute a rational government. Should they attempt more than the established habits of the people are ripe for, they may lose all, and retard indefinitely the ultimate object of their aim. These, Madam, are my opinions; but I wish to know yours, which, I am sure, ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson
... at me almost pityingly. "Don't be so narrow-minded," he said. "We're rational beings. We have the power of speech and we can outreason you any day. There's nothing in the dictionary that says men have ...
— Robots of the World! Arise! • Mari Wolf
... to open a bookbinding business here, on rational co-operative principles. Since you live here what do you think of it, ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... these provisions for rational recreation were made, all unlawful games were prohibited. Conformity was strictly enjoined on the part of the Puritans themselves; and disobedience was rendered punishable by expatriation, as in the case of ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 1 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... the conditions whereunder the Mediums maintain that the manifestations of Independent Slate Writing are alone possible, involves the extreme difficulty, we might almost say the impossibility, of any genuine or rational investigation. Even the very spirit of investigation, or of incredulity, seems to exercise a chilling effect and prevents a successful manifestation. Indeed Mr. Hazard once told us that the true spirit in which to ...
— Preliminary Report of the Commission Appointed by the University • The Seybert Commission
... my mind!" cried Mrs Delvile, rising and embracing her, "noble, generous, yet gentle Cecilia! what tie, what connection, could make you more dear to me? Who is there like you? Who half so excellent? So open to reason, so ingenuous in error! so rational! so just! so ...
— Cecilia vol. 3 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... will probably be spent as unprofitably as the morning: and this it may be, is no unfair specimen of his whole life. And is not such a wretch, for it is improper to call him a man—good for nothing? What is he good for? How can any rational being be willing to spend the precious gift of life in a manner so worthless, and so much beneath the dignity of human nature? When he is about stepping into the grave, how can he review the past with any degree ...
— The Young Man's Guide • William A. Alcott
... distinguished naval officer before and after the Restoration; but he never went to sea subsequently to the action in 1666, when he was taken prisoner.] and Sir William Petty, who in discourse is, methinks, one of the most rational men that ever I heard speak with a tongue, having all his notions the most distinct and clear. To Covent Garden, to buy a maske at the French House, Madam Charett's, for my wife; in the way observing the street full of coaches at the new play, at "The Indian Queene;" ["The Indian Queen," a tragedy ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... which man does what he should and not what he wishes. In the immoral man there is no struggle between two tendencies, one against evil and the other against good. There is only the instinctive tendency; there is no rational control in opposition. What mastery over self does a man have who for the purpose of controlling his habit of dirty and obscene speech seeks the intervention of a saint? Lacking in will, dispossessed of any idea of struggle with himself, ...
— The Legacy of Ignorantism • T.H. Pardo de Tavera
... show that at this period he had some strong positive convictions, which indeed, though changed in later years, continued to influence his mind. He was also persuaded that the Church of England, guarded by the decisions of lawyers, could be kept sufficiently open to admit the gradual infusion of rational belief. I must further remark that his belief, whatever may be thought of it, represented so powerful a sentiment that I must dwell for a little upon its general characteristics. For this reason I will speak here of the series of articles in 'Fraser' to which I have ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... goes on to ask: What can be the ground in reason for the principle universally adopted, that the law of cause and effect rules phenomena, and that a cause which has been followed by an effect once will be followed by the same effect always? And he concludes that no rational ground can be found at all, that it is the mere result of custom without anything rational behind it. We are accustomed to see it so, and what we have been so perpetually accustomed to see we believe that we shall continue to see. But why what has always been hitherto ...
— The Relations Between Religion and Science - Eight Lectures Preached Before the University of Oxford in the Year 1884 • Frederick, Lord Bishop of Exeter
... Britain, in Connecticut, about ten miles from Hartford. He was the youngest son in an old-fashioned family of ten children. His father owned and cultivated a small farm; but spent the winters at the shoemaker's bench, according to the rational custom of Connecticut in that day. When Elihu was sixteen years of age, his father died and the lad soon after apprenticed himself to a blacksmith in ...
— Captains of Industry - or, Men of Business Who Did Something Besides Making Money • James Parton
... the print of her claws on the sand is precisely the size of a pewter dinner-plate; bitten by a scorpion, he makes sure of a scientific description in case he should expire of the bite; is the water undrinkable, there is at least some rational interest in the number of legs possessed by the centipedes which pre-occupy it. This is the highest triumph of man over his accidents, when he thus turns his pains to gains, and becomes an entomologist in ...
— Black Rebellion - Five Slave Revolts • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... daring, godlike suffering, godlike martyrdom; the very conception which was so foreign to the mythologies of any other race—save that of the Jews, and perhaps of our own Teutonic forefathers—did prepare, must have prepared men to receive as most rational and probable, as the satisfaction of their highest instincts, the idea of a Being in whom all those partial rays culminated in clear, pure light; of a Being at once utterly human and utterly divine; who by struggle, ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... poor and unknown as I then was, I had pretty nearly as high an idea of myself and of my works, as I have at this moment, when the public has decided in their favour. It ever was my opinion, that the mistakes and blunders both in a rational and religious point of view, of which we see thousands daily guilty, are owing to their ignorance of themselves. To know myself, had been all along my constant study. I weighed myself alone; I balanced myself with others; I watched every means of information to see ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... practices in animals, as the natural phlebotomy of the plethoric hippopotamus, or the use of emetics from the dog, or the use of enemata from the ibis. On the other hand, Celsus is probably right in his account of the origin of rational medicine. "Some of the sick on account of their eagerness took food on the first day, some on account of loathing abstained; and the disease in those who refrained was more relieved. Some ate during a fever, some a little before it, others after it had ...
— The Evolution of Modern Medicine • William Osler
... side; and we rate the failure or success of nations politically according to their failure or success in attaining this supreme end. When thus considered in the light of the comparative method, our American history acquires added dignity and interest, and a broad and rational basis is secured for the detailed treatment ...
— American Political Ideas Viewed From The Standpoint Of Universal History • John Fiske
... existence, for the manifold blessings and comforts we enjoy. The BEE-HIVE is an emblem of industry, and recommends the practice of that virtue to all created beings, from the highest seraph in heaven to the lowest reptile of the dust. It teaches us that as we came into the world rational and intelligent beings, so we should ever be industrious ones; never sitting down contented while our fellow-creatures around us are in want, when it is in our power to relieve them, without inconvenience to ourselves. When we take a survey of nature, we behold man, ...
— The Mysteries of Free Masonry - Containing All the Degrees of the Order Conferred in a Master's Lodge • William Morgan
... their use. There are only two cases in which, Dr. Rush says, they can be administered without injury, and those are cases of persons like to perish, and where substitutes may be applied of equal effect. What rational man would use them, for the sake of these two possible cases? As well might he introduce rattlesnakes among his children, because their oil is good in diseases with which ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society
... in the feelings or affections (pathemasi), but in the process of reasoning about them (sullogismo).' Here, is in the Parmenides, he means something not really different from generalization. As in the Sophist, he is laying the foundation of a rational psychology, which is to supersede the Platonic reminiscence of Ideas as well as the Eleatic Being and the individualism of Megarians ...
— Theaetetus • Plato
... restoring a native kingdom in Palestine. What made the Jews especially contemptible to culture was that they were retrograde. They strove to put back the clock. There is only one path, so culture affirmed, and that is the path opened by Aristotle, the path of rational logical progress from what we already know to something not now known, but which can be known. If our present state is imperfect, it is because we do not know enough. Every other road, excepting this, the king's highway, heads into a bog. ...
— Catharine Furze • Mark Rutherford
... of the substance of His mother, born in this world, perfect God and perfect man, and the rational soul in human flesh subsisting equal to the Father according to His Godhead, but less than the Father, according to His manhood, who being both God and man is not two but one—one not by conversion of God into flesh but by the taking of the manhood ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll
... about endeavouring to bring the negro to a more rational religious belief, Costal strode ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... will not, Maggie; no one has strength given to do what is unnatural. It is mere cowardice to seek safety in negations. No character becomes strong in that way. You will be thrown into the world some day, and then every rational satisfaction of your nature that you deny now will assault ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... just then, altogether garish and fantastic. I began to wonder how far I had dramatised and distorted the actual events by the exercise of a romantic imagination? In the sweet freshness of the familiar day, I found myself exceedingly inclined to be rational. Also, I was aware of ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford
... is vain labour to seek a cause for every phenomenon. We are chiefly occupied with the quest for an historical condition of the human intellect to which the element in myths, regarded by us as irrational, shall seem rational enough. If we can prove that such a state of mind widely exists among men, and has existed, that state of mind may be provisionally considered as the fount and ORIGIN of the myths which have always perplexed men in a reasonable modern mental condition. Again, if it can be ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... found among all classes and all conditions. In the kind of provincial life which prevails in cities such as this, the Pulpit has great influence. The peculiar province of the Pulpit in New England (always excepting the Unitarian Ministry) would appear to be the denouncement of all innocent and rational amusements. The church, the chapel, and the lecture-room, are the only means of excitement excepted; and to the church, the chapel, and the lecture-room, ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... prophet Moses. But these histories, seeming clear-sighted in the obscure affairs of so blind an antiquity, instead of passing for treasuries of ancient facts, are regarded by the judicious as modern fictions. In cases of this sort rational conjectures are more to be relied on than improbable relations. It is most probable that Ireland was first peopled from Britain. The coasts of these countries are in some places in sight of each other. The language, the ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... purport or to what end, none stays to inquire . It incites; sometimes it enthralls. It innervates; it exhaults. Under its spell, reason is flung to the winds, and matters of great mundane moment are trivial and of no account: for it bewilders the wit and snatches the judgment of sane and rational men. It is most powerful in youth; it is most powerful upon youth; yet some retain it till far on in years, and no age but feels its sway:—a veiled and mysterious force; sometimes daemonical, often ...
— Hints for Lovers • Arnold Haultain
... own natural reason and judgment may gather, that there is a God, a Deity, a chief, or first, or principal Being, who is over all, and supreme above all. This instinct, I say, man merely as he is a rational creature findeth in himself; and hence it is, that all heathens that mind their own natural reason, do conclude, that we are his offspring; that is, His creation and workmanship. That He made heaven and earth, and hath made of one blood, all nations of men; that "in him we live, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... moral essays, but his life as told by Boswell full of fortifying and stimulating ethical food. All alike exhibit a mind that recognized the problem of the conduct of life as the one thing of supreme interest to a rational man, and recognized it as above all things a moral problem. His treatment of it is usually based on reason, not on mere authority or orthodoxy, or even on Christianity at all. Rasselas, for instance, his most popular ethical work, which was translated into most of ...
— Dr. Johnson and His Circle • John Bailey
... announced, "and I've come to the conclusion that I think with him on all matters. He's done more to educate the people up to a rational form of government during the last seven years than all the rest of us put together. He's shone upon them like a fixed star. Other comets have come and gone, whirling them forward to destruction, but they have always been forced to turn and look at him again and again, and he has always shone ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... quoted from observers in evidence of the superior mental powers of the apes. Hartmann says of them that "their intelligence sets them high above other mammals," and Romanes that they "certainly surpass all other animals in the scope of their rational faculty." It is scarcely necessary here to give extended examples of ape intelligence. Hundreds of instances are on record, many of them showing remarkable powers of reasoning for one of the lower animals. The ape, it is true, is not alone ...
— Man And His Ancestor - A Study In Evolution • Charles Morris
... receiving many wounds, in helping to establish his glory." When I looked upon the contemptible object that pronounced these words, I was amazed at the infatuation that possessed him; and could not help expressing my astonishment at the absurdity of a rational who thinks himself highly honoured, in being permitted to encounter abject poverty, oppression, famine, disease, mutilation, and evident death merely to gratify the vicious ambition of a prince, by whom his sufferings were disregarded, ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... century suggested better instruction, Basedow (chapter XXII) tried to institute reform in the teaching of the subject, but it was left for Pestalozzi (chapter XXI) to give the first real impetus to the rational teaching of ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... the churchyard. That shows how far I was from nature. The country was something that farmers moved about in—those big, voracious creatures, who almost seemed like a kind of animal trying to imitate man. Rational beings could not possibly live out there. That was the view in my circle, and I had myself a touch of the same complaint, although my university training of course paraphrased and veiled it all to some extent. All this about our relations to nature seemed to me very interesting aesthetically, ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... the levitations and elongations, however, it is not so easy to raise the cry of sheer fraud. Here the only rational explanation, short of supposing that Home availed himself if not of the aid of "spirits" at least of the aid of some unknown physical force, seems to be, as was said, the exercise of hypnotic power. The accounts given by Lord Dunraven, Lord Crawford, and Sir William Crookes ...
— Historic Ghosts and Ghost Hunters • H. Addington Bruce
... to declare an act of Congress void if not within the legislative power of the United States, this declaration should never be made except in a clear case. Every possible presumption is in favor of the validity of a statute, and this continues until the contrary is shown beyond a rational doubt. One branch of the government cannot encroach on the domain of another without danger. The safety of our institutions depends in no small degree on a strict observance of this salutary rule." And this is exactly what happened. The judiciary here assumed the function of the legislative ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... present day with freedom and effect, in communicating with each other on the subject of their respective manufactures. Prejudices seldom outlive the generation to which they belong, when opposed by a more rational system of explanation. In this respect, Time (as my Lord Bacon says) is the greatest ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... accustomed to trip in on tiptoe after a timid little knock and the query, "Do I disturb you, Jack dear?"—a query which he answered with quite superfluous assurance to the contrary. Later, even after their wise conclusion that they must be rational, she had been accustomed to put the question, not at all as a purely perfunctory marital civility, but, as she shyly admitted to herself, because it was so sweet to hear Jack's negation and see the love-light in the eyes that soon brought her, fascinated and fluttering, to be folded in his ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... until we have caught up with our own conditions, before we shall be where we were when we started; when we started this great experiment which has been the hope and the beacon of the world. And we should have to run twice as fast as any rational program I have seen in order ...
— The New Freedom - A Call For the Emancipation of the Generous Energies of a People • Woodrow Wilson
... who went to execute the orders, casting all the while looks behind him, to see if the bishop of Vannes were not deceived; and if, on recovering more rational ideas, he would not recall him. The alarm was sounded, trumpets brayed, drums rolled; the great bronze bell swung in horror from its lofty belfry. The dikes and moles were quickly filled with the curious and soldiers; matches ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... certainty of prophets, nor hope by our beautiful schemes to make a perfect state; but we can only come near to perfection in the light of a perfect ideal, and however far below it we may remain, we can at least, under its inspiration, reach an existence rational and human: our justification for a brave effort lies in that the governments of this time are neither one nor the other. He who thinks Ireland's struggle to express her own mind, to give utterance to her own tongue, to stand behind ...
— Principles of Freedom • Terence J. MacSwiney
... popular. I have resorted for this purpose to the methods of fiction and of formal argument. The implication of all the writings by which I have attempted to do this is that the mischief, religious, social, and political, which "advanced" thought has done may in time, by a rational development of conservative thought, be undone, and the true faiths be revived on which the sanctities, the stabilities, and the civilization ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock
... others. Such a system provides no mind (a) in which and for which the whole system exists, or (b) to effect the correspondence between mind and body, or (c) to allow of a purpose in the Universe; without this the world is not rational, . 96 ...
— Philosophy and Religion - Six Lectures Delivered at Cambridge • Hastings Rashdall
... some chance of escaping. That was the best that could be done. Razumov, of course, felt the safety of his lonely existence to be permanently endangered. This evening's doings could turn up against him at any time as long as this man lived and the present institutions endured. They appeared to him rational and indestructible at that moment. They had a force of harmony—in contrast with the horrible discord of this man's presence. He hated the ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... body else, for his subsequent acquirements did not correspond thereunto. In good sooth it is believed that he never really mastered a single lesson afterward. Having succeeded in getting into the college, it was a very rational conclusion that he would some day find his way out of it. He knew that the four years would pass away in less than five; and as he had turned student to avoid hard labor, why should he fatigue himself by digging at the roots of hard ...
— Ups and Downs in the Life of a Distressed Gentleman • William L. Stone |
