"Skeptic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to a clear and forcible display of the reasonableness and certainty of our faith in Jesus Christ as the author of immortality to man, that we ascertain the proper ground on which the modern skeptic, of whatever creed, stands when he avows his opposition to the gospel. That we may duly estimate the strength of his opposition, we must not only enumerate his objections or arguments, but we must exactly ascertain ...
— The Christian Foundation, May, 1880
... not risk the chance of rebuff. How could she foretell what was in his mind and heart, how probe the depths of his feeling toward her? Perhaps he would receive her protestations in skeptic spirit. Heaven knew he had cause to! ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance
... long hunt," rejoined the skeptic, and with his eyes still on the tail of the disappearing Exposition car, ...
— The Lure of San Francisco - A Romance Amid Old Landmarks • Elizabeth Gray Potter and Mabel Thayer Gray
... on the young skeptic, nettled at the laugh that went round, "that don't prove anything. You know," turning to The Pilot, "that there are heaps of people who don't believe ...
— The Sky Pilot • Ralph Connor
... hand, he exclaimed, "Praise the Lord that ever he sent you to this place." He was asked to pray. "Yes, yes," was his instant reply, "that is just what I want to do;" and such a prayer as he offered up is seldom heard. A well-known skeptic arose and openly ...
— American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 4, April, 1889 • Various
... worst in the Bible. Huxley thought it the best. Huxley was, as everybody knows, the Prince of Agnostics. We need not stop to ask why. Nobody who has read the story of John Stuart Mill's boyhood will wonder that Mill was a skeptic. And nobody who has read the story of Thomas Huxley's boyhood will wonder at his becoming an agnostic. As Edward Clodd, his biographer, says, 'his boyhood was a cheerless time. Reversing ...
— A Handful of Stars - Texts That Have Moved Great Minds • Frank W. Boreham
... needless to say that I went as a skeptic; but I must own that I have come away utterly unable to explain by any natural means the phenomena that ...
— Modern Spiritualism • Uriah Smith
... accomplice, confederate, conspirator. Acknowledge, admit, confess, own, avow. Active, agile, nimble, brisk, sprightly, spry, bustling. Advise, counsel, admonish, caution, warn. Affecting, moving, touching, pathetic. Agnostic, skeptic, infidel, unbeliever, disbeliever. Amuse, entertain, divert. Announce, proclaim, promulgate, report, advertise, publish, bruit, blazon, trumpet, herald. Antipathy, aversion, repugnance, disgust, loathing. Artifice, ruse, trick, dodge, manoeuver, wile, stratagem, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... daughter of the Ordinance of 1787, already the young mother of other commonwealths that bid fair to vie with her in beauty, rises in her loveliness and glory, crowned with cities, and challenges the admiration of the world. Hither should come the political skeptic, who, in his despair, is ready to strand the ship of state; for here he may learn how to guide it safely on the waters. Should some modern Telemachus, heir to an island empire, touch these shores, here he may observe the vitality and strength of the ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... if he sometimes grow skeptic or acid about the profession of letters. Of each hundred manuscripts turned in there will rarely be more than three or four that merit any serious consideration; only about one in a hundred will be acceptable for publication. And the ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... of Epicurus that he loved to hearken to the stories of the indifference and apathy of Pyrrhon, and that, in these qualities, he aspired to imitate him. But Epicurus was not, like Pyrrhon, a skeptic; on the contrary, he was the most imperious dogmatist. No man ever showed so little respect for the opinions of his predecessors, or so much confidence in his own. He was fond of boasting that he had made his own philosophy—he was a "self-taught" ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... world's wisdom at Alexandria in his day; and Philo, like the other philosophers of the time, shows acquaintance with the ideas of Egyptian, Chaldean, Persian,[48] and even Indian thought. The chief Greek schools in his age were the Stoic, the Platonic, the Skeptic and the Pythagorean, which had each its professors in the Museum and its popular preachers in the public lecture-halls. Later we will notice more closely Philo's relations to the Greek philosophers: suffice it here to say that he was the most distinguished ...
— Philo-Judaeus of Alexandria • Norman Bentwich
... upon his lips, he threw himself, face downwards, on the ground beneath it, and, with his fingers clutched in the soil, lay there for some moments, silent and still. In this attitude, albeit a skeptic and unorthodox man, he prayed. I cannot say—indeed I DARE not say—that his prayer was heard, or that God visited him thus. Let us rather hope that all there was of God in him, in this crucial moment of agony and shame, strove outward and upward. Howbeit, when the moon rose he ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... anything you have never seen, but by either showing you a picture of it, or telling you what it is like? That is simply by type or symbol; these are the only possible media of conveying heavenly truth, or future history to our minds. When, therefore, the skeptic insists that prophecy be given literally, in the style of history written in advance, he simply requires that God would make it utterly unintelligible. We can gather clear and definite ideas from the ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... the sufficing reason that a fulness of data is lacking. Nevertheless, man never lived of whom more has been said and sung, none to whom is devoted a greater proportion of the world's literature. He is extolled by Christian, Mohammedan and Jew, by skeptic and infidel, by the world's greatest poets, philosophers, statesmen, scientists, and historian. Even the profane sinner in the foul, sacrilege of his oath acclaims the divine supremacy of Him whose ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... what of weakness it might carry. But face him with any peril or problem and the drawer closed instantaneously leaving a mind that was utterly fearless, incredulous, and ingenious; swept clean of all cobwebs by as fine a skeptic broom ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... no religious scoffers, among those soldiers seriously awaiting the zero hour. In the rear areas and rest billets, the profane and irreligious word might often have been heard; but face to face with Death, Judgment, Heaven or Hell, the skeptic was silenced. Boys who might have been hitherto negligent in approaching the Sacraments were now the first to call to me, "Father, I want to go ...
— The Greater Love • George T. McCarthy
... GOOD TALKER. There is no class of persons so generally underrated and vilified, yet this would be a dull world without them. And the faculty is not to be acquired. Really good talkers are born, not made. (And some, I hear a skeptic say, are not to be borne in certain contingencies.) Talk is like a river; it rushes onward, by expression of ideas, making room for thoughts to follow, and the dull elf, whose mouth is a mill-dam, finds his fancies and thoughts accumulate on his brain, till that organ is dull and sodden as is his ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... and perverse skeptic, that these things are so: that ocular and auricular evidence, indubitable and overwhelming, exists, that the arboreal and human natures are in substance one. Know that once on a time, as Daphne, the lovely daughter of Peneus, was amusing herself with a bow and arrows in a forest of Thessaly, she ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... heart of the skeptic was sunk. This evasion was more disillusioning than downright confession. A moment the little boy regarded her, wholly in sorrow, with big eyes that blinked alarmingly. Then came his last shot; the final bullet which the besieged warrior will sometimes reserve for his own destruction. ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... let us note that in Catholicism as early as in Protestantism appeared the sharp rift between intellect and belief. Montaigne, a man of the world, is outwardly a conformist, but a real skeptic. A nominal Catholic, he corresponds to Shakspere, a nominal Protestant. Montaigne reveals the world of one personality as, frankly as Shakspere pictures a world of humanity, and in each the purely religious element is almost ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... of wondering. Her power of judgment was not so far lost as it is in a dream—where we wonder at nothing, but cast off skeptic misery—and for the moment she seemed to be brought home from the distance of roving delusion, by looking at two of her children kissing a man who was hunting in his pocket ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... and revealer of truth. We know truth when we see it, let skeptic and scoffer say what they choose. Foolish people ask you, when you have spoken what they do not wish to hear, 'How do you know it is truth, and not an error of your own?' We know truth when we ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... theoretically and practically, and, I believe, become thereby ever the more convincing. The creed would be not merely a record of an old belief to be accepted on authority, but a challenge to the skeptic and the irreligious. The Church, instead of being a place where the deliverances of ancient religious authorities are expounded, and illustrated by reference to the contents of one book and the history of one nation—as if no other books were inspired and ...
— Modern Religious Cults and Movements • Gaius Glenn Atkins
... is shown by his power of style.... His Journal is a book in which the thoughts of many hearts are revealed.... There are strange forms of mysticism, which the poetical intellect takes. I suppose we must not try to explain them. Amiel was a Neo-Platonist and a skeptic in one. ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... for a full minute. "I wouldn't buy it except for one thing. If you, the hardest-boiled skeptic that ever went unhung, can feed yourself the whole bowl of such a mess as that, I can at least take a ...
— The Galaxy Primes • Edward Elmer Smith
... confidence in the true" declares Balzac. "She has more strength in her looks than we have in our laws, and more power by her tears than we have by our arguments," says the Duke of Halifax, a great statesman. "All the reasonings of men are not worth one sentiment of woman," says Voltaire, skeptic in all else. "Women in their nature are much more gay and joyous than men," writes Addison, "whether it be that their blood is more refined, their fibers more delicate, and their animal spirits more light and volatile; or whether, as some ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern
... 1711, d. 1776) was a celebrated Scotch historian and essayist. His most important work is "The History of England." He was a skeptic in matters of religion, and was a peculiarly ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... the end of time, the vanity and credulity of women will lead them to lend credence to such statements, rather than look matters firmly in the face, with the eyes of common-sense and experience. I, for one, am a very skeptic on this subject of manly dislike growing out of female susceptibility, and usually take the conservative ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... from that of the ladies of the household. And yet he pretended to be a firm believer in Christianity; and while he had no objection to any extreme of vice, he discountenanced infidelity. On one occasion, when a philosophical skeptic had been enlarging for some time on his objections to the Christian faith, Charles replied by saying, "My lord, I am a great deal older than your grace, and have heard more arguments in favor of atheism than you, but I have lived long enough to see that there is nothing in them, and I hope your ...
— History of King Charles II of England • Jacob Abbott
... leveled in his direction. He studied the note, creased it, drew it through his fingers, smoothed it and caressed it. "And I should have done exactly as I threatened. There is, then, a Providence which watches jealously over the innocent? And I was a skeptic!... Two hundred thousand dollars,"—picking up the packet of banknotes and balancing it on his hand. "Well, it is a sum large enough to tempt any man. How the plans and schemes of men crumble to the touch! Ambition is ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath
... goes, thou unbelieving skeptic," replied one of his comrades, laughing; "has not the gallant been seen, recognized—is he not known as one of King Edward's minions, and lords it bravely? But hark! there are chargers pricking over the plain. Hurrah! Sir Edward and Lord James," and on came a large body of troopers and infantry ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar
... the subject of an immense variety of speculations, and has involved the question, whether all men are the sons of Adam, or whether the distinctions of the human race were owing to the several sources from whence its members sprung? The skeptic supposition that each portion of the globe gave its own original type of man to the human family at once solves the difficulty of American population; but as both Christianity and philosophy alike forbid acceptance of this view,[208] it becomes necessary to consider the relative probabilities in ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... wild, troubled days, Misjudged alike in blame and praise, Unsought and undeserved the same The skeptic's praise, the ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... result of training and conviction. Every character is influenced by heredity, environment and education; but these apart, if every man were not to a great extent the architect of his own character, he would be a fatalist, an irresponsible creature of circumstances, which, even the skeptic must confess he is not. So long as a man has the power to change one habit, good or bad, for another, so long he is responsible for his own character, and this responsibility continues ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon
... which the date is of yesterday, and which is in opposition to first appearances, how must it fare with those which are conformable to appearances familiar from the first dawn of intelligence, and of the conclusiveness of which, from the earliest records of human thought, no skeptic has suggested ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... rule, and it becomes a secondary object to rule well. "Tyranny has, indeed, no outlet!" The few, whom in modern times we have seen endowed with a similar spirit of self-control, have attracted our admiration by their honesty rather than their intellect; and the skeptic in human virtue has ascribed the purity of Washington as much to the mediocrity of his genius as to the sincerity of his patriotism:—the coarseness of vulgar ambition can sympathize but little with those who refuse a throne. But in Solon there is no disparity between the mental and ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... used. The men who accompanied the murderers paused, abashed and chilled. The murderers paused and looked at one another; no words can describe that look! Planks were put down, and they walked over their own grave to their death. Is there a skeptic who tells me this was chance? Then I tell him he is a credulous fool to believe that chance can imitate omniscience, omnipotence and holiness so inimitably. In this astounding fact of exact retribution I see nothing that resembles chance. I see the arm of God and the ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... for, the nervous tremor that shakes the small hand he has drawn within his arm; but he is so far a philosopher that he tells himself it is but a little thing in her life; she can bear it; she will recover from it; "and in time forget that she had been ever ill," says this good-natured skeptic to himself. ...
— April's Lady - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... until I felt the reproduction exact. This book tells its own story of long and patient waiting for a specimen, of watching, of disappointments, and triumphs. I love it especially among my book children because it represents my highest ideals in the making of a nature book, and I can take any skeptic afield and prove the truth of the natural history ...
— At the Foot of the Rainbow • Gene Stratton-Porter
... fruits in their season, led by the incomparable Georgia watermelon. I may have inadvertently omitted some items from this toothsome list, but it is enough as it stands to make an epicure's mouth water. And if any skeptic were still unconvinced, a photographer would be admitted with his undeniable camera at certain seasons—Christmas and Fourth of July, for example—who would place a picture of the revelry and the revelers ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... relation was a cousin, the Marquis de Territet, a skeptic, who lived in Burgundy, and whom all this disturbance had upset in his habits, and whose only desire was to get it all over, the legal formalities, the funeral, and all the rest of it, as ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... great German skeptic, Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900), appears in some of Shaw's dramas, as well as in the novels of Wells; but the poets of this age seem to have more faith than Swinburne or Matthew Arnold or some of the minor versifiers of the last quarter of ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... What, cries the skeptic, what has become of all the hopes of the time when France stood upon the top of golden hours? Do not let us fear the challenge. Much has come of them. And over the old hopes time has ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... skeptic, is to lack the motives necessary to establish a judgment. In view of the proofs which seem to establish, and of the arguments which combat the existence of a God, some persons prefer to doubt and to suspend their judgment; but at ...
— Superstition In All Ages (1732) - Common Sense • Jean Meslier
... boat, feeling that they had had a great day of it, all told. The presence of the venison, as well as the wolf-skins, would be positive proof as to the reliability of their astonishing story; should there be any skeptic around. And then Thad had the wonderful mushroomed bullet that had killed that six-pronged buck; so that as they narrated the first adventure that had come their way, they could produce evidence ...
— The Boy Scouts in the Maine Woods - The New Test for the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter
... experiences with the famous Mrs. Piper, led him to the enthusiastic indorsement of this hypothesis; but at the time of the Vennum affair, with the recollection of his triumphs in Europe and Asia fresh in his mind, he was still a thoroughgoing if open minded skeptic; and to Lurancy Vennum must accordingly be given the credit of having brought him, so to speak, to the turning of the ways. Oddly enough too, scarce an effort has been made to assemble evidence in disproof of his findings in that case ...
— Historic Ghosts and Ghost Hunters • H. Addington Bruce
... interesting tradition relates to an event supposed to have occurred many centuries before the Spanish Conquest. We have no ocular evidence to support it. The skeptic may brush it aside as a story intended to appeal to the vanity of persons with Inca blood in their veins; yet it is not told by the half-caste Garcilasso, who wanted Europeans to admire his maternal ancestors and wrote his book accordingly, but is in the pages of that careful investigator Montesinos, ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham
... of her lover's wishes. "Come, father," she cried merrily. "I am aching to see what the ship's stores, which you and Robert pin your faith to, can do for me in the shape of garments. I have the utmost belief in the British navy, and even a skeptic should be convinced of its infallibility if H.M.S. Orient is able ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... express his doubt," suggested Mr. Perry with a smile; "for, if a man must doubt, he'd better shout than smother his ideas in a skeptic pout." ...
— The Radio Boys in the Thousand Islands • J. W. Duffield
... Israelites of old, they succeed at length in escaping from the hands of oppression and tyranny, but only to wander in a desert land throughout the length of their days. This is the region where dwell the pessimist, the skeptic and the cynic—miserable mortals that have wasted on creatures the talents they should have given to their Creator, or that have otherwise failed in their conception of life, and have left unmultiplied the money of the Master.(92) There is plainly no middle course ...
— The Shepherd Of My Soul • Rev. Charles J. Callan
... well the case of a man of 32 who came to me for help after five of the so-called schools for stammerers had failed to afford him any relief. Quite naturally this man was a confirmed skeptic. He did not believe that there was any cure for him. Anyone who had been through the trials that he had experienced would have felt the same way. But he placed himself under treatment, nevertheless, and in a few weeks' time, the ...
— Stammering, Its Cause and Cure • Benjamin Nathaniel Bogue
... on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust"; and Mr. Bluphocks shows himself amusingly familiar with Bible facts and phrases. Mr. Sludge, "the Medium," thinks the Bible says the stars are "set for signs when we should shear sheep, sow corn, prune trees," and describes the skeptic in the magic circle of spiritual "investigators" as the "guest without the wedding-garb, the doubting Thomas." Some one has taken the trouble to count five hundred Biblical phrases or allusions in "The Ring and the Book." Mrs. Browning's "'Drama of Exile" is the woman's side of the fall of Adam ...
— The Greatest English Classic A Study of the King James Version of • Cleland Boyd McAfee
... and had been accustomed from childhood to listen to the philosophical disputations of the men about her. So she perfectly understood her brother Philip, the skeptic, when he said that he by no means denied the existence of the immortals, but that, on the other hand, he could not believe in it; that thought brought him no conviction; that man, in short, could be sure of nothing, and so could ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... members of the cabinet were deeply impressed; but General Grant, who had come to Washington that morning and was present, remarked with matter-of-fact exactness that Murfreesboro was no victory and had no important results. Not the wildest imagination of skeptic or mystic could have pictured the events under which the ...
— The Boys' Life of Abraham Lincoln • Helen Nicolay
... no motive in his heart impelling him to be an industrious, self-supporting citizen—in short, if he has not a new heart looking to a new life as a citizen and a man, he will become a vagabond on the land granted him, and a skeptic in the school in which he is taught. The next few years will constitute a crisis in the rapidly changing condition of the Indian, and it is precisely at this point where the vital element of the Christian life must be infused into his character. To the Christian public, all ...
— The American Missionary, Volume XLII. No. 7. July 1888 • Various
... try to stun him with a hatchet," said Bill, the skeptic. "But suppose you couldn't get ...
— The Rushton Boys at Treasure Cove - Or, The Missing Chest of Gold • Spencer Davenport
... not quite satisfied without further investigation, I asked mother for permission to go to David Coleman's to play an hour with his little girls. Little did she know that the object of her little five-year-old skeptic was to present the test to their father and mother, to see whether they were one, and found the same result ...
— A Woman's Life-Work - Labors and Experiences • Laura S. Haviland
... secretary of the Neapolitan Embassy, a clever dwarf; a genius, "a sort of Plato or Machiavelli with the spirit and action of a harlequin," inexhaustible in stories, an admirable buffoon, and an accomplished skeptic, "having no faith in anything, on anything or about anything,"[4206] not even in the new philosophy, braves the atheists of the drawing-room, beats down their dithyrambs with puns, and, with his perruque in his hand, sitting cross-legged on the chair ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... cardinal; "that is how you believe in the royal virtues. Ah, skeptic, St. Thomas was credulous, compared ...
— The Queen's Necklace • Alexandre Dumas pere
... Renaissance, then as now the spring flowers came up amid the decaying foliage. At this period there came a demand for the remodelling of education through the great figure of modern times, Montaigne, that skeptic who had so deep a reverence for realities. In his Essays, in his Letters to the Countess of Gurson, are found all of the elements for the education of the future. About the great German and Swiss ...
— The Education of the Child • Ellen Key
... confirmed skeptic cannot refuse to believe that at the introduction of Christianity into Ireland, in 432, the whole island was governed by institutions exactly similar to those of Gaul when Julius Caesar entered it 400 years before; ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... system as useful as it is simple, and as scientific as the principle of flexion and leverage on which it depends. Had this incident been related to a stupid man, he would have seen nothing in it, or to a skeptic, he would have discredited the whole account, but to a man of genius it furnished a clue by which another of Nature's labyrinths was traced out. This system is by far the best ever devised, symplifying and rendering easy the work of the surgeon, ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... Willie Gear was his father's pride and pet. He was a noble boy. He inherited his mother's tenderness and patience, and with them his father's acute and questioning intellect. He was a curious combination of a natural skeptic and a natural believer. He had welcomed the first step toward converting our Bible-class into a mission Sabbath-school, and had done more than any one else to fill it up with boys from the Mill village. ...
— Laicus - The experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish • Lyman Abbott
... From "Montaigne; or The Skeptic," in "Representative Men." Published by Houghton, ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various
... a great singer," continued this world-defying skeptic, "trilling like a thrush, scampering over the scales, I see a clumsy lot of ah, ah, ahs, awkwardly, uncertainly ambling up the gamut, saying, 'were it not for us she could not sing thus—give us our ...
— The Fifth String, The Conspirators • John Philip Sousa
... Syracuse Journal:— If it would not be asking too much, I would beg leave to say a few words through the columns of your paper. In Saturday's issue of the Standard I notice a letter written by "Skeptic," which that paper calls "silly," and charges the writer with being "lacking in the upper story." This is a misfortune, truly; but I have taken some trouble to investigate these reports and find them vouched for by highly respectable parties. There are, ...
— The American Goliah • Anon.
... hall we looked from a window upon the snowy world. Perhaps we were too old to believe in Santa Claus, but even so, on this magic night might not a skeptic be at fault—might there not be a chance that the discarded world had returned to us? Once a year, surely, reason might nod and drowse. Perhaps if we put our noses on the cold glass and peered hard into the glittering darkness, we might see the old fellow himself, muffled ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks
... inherited constitution, are too often stage effects which do not last. From a mere purposive point of view, they may be complete successes. They may have turned the immoral man into a moral man, the skeptic into a believer, but the physician cannot overlook that the result may be a moral man with a crippled nervous system, a believer with psychasthenic symptoms. From the point of view of the church, there cannot ...
— Psychotherapy • Hugo Muensterberg
... mere epigram to say that if the greatest fact about the Scriptures is God, the greatest fact about God is Christ. Any thorough study of the Scriptures must revolve around Christ as its center. If the Scriptures mean anything, they mean that in Christ we see God. Of course it is open to the skeptic to reply that in all this the Scriptures are completely mistaken; but he cannot maintain that this is not what the Scriptures mean. The Book comes to its climax with an honest conviction that Christ is the consummate revelation of God. The day when men could charge ...
— Understanding the Scriptures • Francis McConnell
... a translation of the fourth sonnet may serve to give some idea of how far the world-renowned philosopher and skeptic has succeeded in his effort to assume the anomalous ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... is nothing but glory beyond, our faces ought to shine brightly all the time. If a skeptic were to come up here and watch the countenances of the audience he would find many of you looking as though there was anything but glory before you. Many a time it seems to me as if I were at a funeral, people look so sad and downcast. They do not appear to know ...
— Sovereign Grace - Its Source, Its Nature and Its Effects • Dwight Moody
... if it be true, this truth shall steal into your souls like the accents of childhood; it shall come like a bright vision of hope to the desponding; it shall flash upon the incredulous; it shall twine like a chain of golden arguments about the reason of the skeptic. ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... of Uncle Terry's mildly flavored shafts of sarcasm, he made no enemies and his kind heart and sterling honesty were respected far and near. He was considered a doubter and skeptic, and though seldom seen at church, as he had originally contributed his share when that edifice was built, his lack ...
— Uncle Terry - A Story of the Maine Coast • Charles Clark Munn
... consider philosophically untenable. We must also regard it as highly unwise and dangerous, in the present state and present prospects of physical and physiological science. We should expect the philosophical atheist or skeptic to take this ground; also, until better informed, the unlearned and unphilosophical believer; but we should think that the thoughtful theistic philosopher would take the other side. Not to do so seems to concede that only supernatural events can be shown ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... elders. Every new stage of our educational training provides some additional testimony on its behalf. Newspapers and novelists, orators and playwrights, even if they are little else, are at least loyal preachers of the Truth. The skeptic is not controverted; he is overlooked. It constitutes the kind of faith which is the implication, rather than the object, of thought, and consciously or unconsciously it enters largely into our ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... woman in a cloister—carrying out to the full the ascetic principle? Would you have conventicle hymns twanging from every lane in every city in the world? Would you have all the birds of the forest sing one note and fly with one feather? You call me a skeptic because I acknowledge what is; and in acknowledging that, be it linnet or lark, a priest or parson, be it, I mean, any single one of the infinite varieties of the creatures of God (whose very name I would be understood ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... individuality to which you and I belong—too often dispels those sensitive enthusiasms by its neglect or disapproval. Do we not find in our daily speech a certain cynicism toward youth? Does not our skeptic wisdom paste the label "illusions" over the word "ideals" written on the young man's brow? Is there not a refusal to recognize young manhood's force until it compels ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... the death Of Him whose life was Love! Holy with power, He on the thought-benighted Skeptic beamed Manifest Godhead. Religious ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... that I could not count it real. He seemed actuated by some sudden controlling sympathy (as he often is) that I could not explain; and had it been otherwise, your injunction, dear papa, and the fact that he has become a bitter skeptic in regard to our most holy religion, would have made me pause. He dropped a hint, too, of the mystery attaching to my family, (not unkindly, for he is, after all, a dear, good-hearted fellow,) which kindled not a little ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... (1678-1733), cure of Estrepigny, in Champagne, was a skeptic, but preached only strict orthodoxy to his people. It was only in his manuscript, Mon Testament, that was published after his death, and that caused a great sensation in France, that his ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... history; which imparts dignity to the rudest workshop, and the most barren shore, and the humblest grave—this permits us to draw no mean or discouraging conclusions from the achievements and the changes of the multitudes around us. It may do for the skeptic, who sees nothing in existence but these forms of things; who sees nothing but the limited phenomena of our present state, and thinks that includes all; it may do for him to croak over the transitoriness of life, and call it a trivial ...
— Humanity in the City • E. H. Chapin
... given us no adequate body of data by which we may predict the birth of a genius, they have, on the other hand, given us most minute descriptions whereby we may recognize the husk containing the poetic gift. The skeptic may ask, What has the poet to do with his ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... greater influence if they will rigidly exclude from their teaching force the brilliant skeptic who "becomes the center of a coterie without his gifts, dazzled by his boldness, infected by his skepticism;" but rather employ Christian professors who will inspire a "noble ambition that unites in its scope the life that now is and that which is to ...
— Colleges in America • John Marshall Barker
... must be the Ideal Physical Man. We must never stop short of working until,—now, do not doubt me, sir,—every Canadian is the strongest and most beautiful man that can be thought. No matter how utterly chimerical this seems to the parlor skeptic who insists on our seeing only the common-place, it cannot be so to the true thinker who knows the promises of science and reflects that a nation can turn its face to endeavours which are impossible for a person. Physical culture ...
— The Young Seigneur - Or, Nation-Making • Wilfrid Chateauclair
... of his great chair, with that everlasting dry, wrinkled smile on his lips, that smile a la Voltaire, which made people take him for a terrible skeptic. ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... chance to become the party of progress. Luther himself was not only disappointed in the disaffection of Erasmus, but was sincerely rebelled by his rationalism. A man who could have the least doubt about a doctrine was to him "an Arian, an atheist, and a skeptic." He went so far as to say that the great Dutch scholar's primary object in publishing the Greek New Testament was to make readers doubtful about the text, and that the chief end of his Colloquies was to mock all ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... skeptics,—at least when they stubbornly refuse to believe. There was the risk of being shaken himself, without profiting the other. It was better to leave the unfortunate fellow to the will of God, who, if He so designs, would see to it that the skeptic was enlightened: or if not, who would dare to go against the will of God? Leonard did not insist then on carrying on the discussion. He only said gently that for the time being there was nothing to be done, that no ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... longer claim to be the cornerstone of religion and morality. But if she can not be the Atlas that bears the moral world she can furnish a magic defense. Around the ideas of religion she throws her bulwark of invisibility; and the sword of the skeptic and the battering-ram of the materialist ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... his very extraordinary discourse. I cannot pretend to recount all that he told me, but I gleaned from what he said that he was the genius who presided over the contretemps of mankind, and whose business it was to bring about the odd accidents which are continually astonishing the skeptic. Once or twice, upon my venturing to express my total incredulity in respect to his pretensions, he grew very angry indeed, so that at length I considered it the wiser policy to say nothing at all, and let him have his own way. He talked on, therefore, at great length, while ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... his massive head Against the pillar of the portico, Smiled his slow, skeptic smile, then laughed, and said: "Nay, surely not—if what you say be so. You've made a statement, but no proof's at hand. Wait—do not flash your eyes so! Understand I think you quite sincere in what you say: You love your friend, and she loves you, to-day; But friendship ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... Sadducistic race, With grovelling intellects and base,) 620 They could not find the slightest trace To indicate deception; Indeed, it is declared by some That spirits (of this sort) are glum, Almost, or wholly, deaf and dumb, And (out of self-respect) quite mum To skeptic natures cold and numb Who of this kind of Kingdom Come Have not a just conception: True, there were people who demurred 630 That, though the raps no doubt were heard Both under them and o'er them, Yet, somehow, when a search they made, They found Miss ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... gulls, white and beautiful, advancing upon the hosts of the black destroyers. Falling upon the people's foes, they devoured them by the thousand, and when filled to repletion, disgorged and feasted again. And they did not stop till the crickets were destroyed. Again the skeptic will say this was but chance; but the people accepted that chance as a providential ruling in their behalf, and reverently ...
— The Story of "Mormonism" • James E. Talmage
... instruction, and mental objects are necessary to enable a man to understand religion and duty. Attention, study, comparison, continued with calmness, and candor, and patience, for days, for months, or for years, may be necessary to enable a skeptic to understand, to believe, and to feel like those who have long been disciples ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... amelioration, because I believed that the conditions, deplorable as they appear to us, of the working poor, were natural, the outcome of laws which it is useless to resist. I adopted the only method possible for putting my belief to the test. I did what had never been done. I was a skeptic and something of a sentimentalist when I started. I have become convinced, as I worked, that certain of the most unfortunate conditions are not natural, and that they can therefore be corrected. It ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst
... Here generation after generation, amidst danger, battle and death, men had bowed down and poured out their hottest, most fervent prayers, and their sincerity and faith had sanctified the ground for Christian, Brahman and skeptic alike. ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... row and walk and drive and to become acquainted, was all due to the air. It has a peculiar quality. Even the skeptic has to admit this. It composes his nerves to sleep, it stimulates to unwonted exertion. The fanatics of the place declare that the fogs are not damp as at other resorts on the coast. Fashion can make even a fog dry. But the ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... of infidelity. That there are honest skeptics in the world we all believe, and the honest skeptic is one who says, "I cannot believe as you do, and I do not know that I would if I could, but if your hope is any comfort to you, then cling to it and go down to your ...
— And Judas Iscariot - Together with other evangelistic addresses • J. Wilbur Chapman
... Wisconsin in 1840, residing, as we have seen, first at Troy, and subsequently at Waupun. In early life he was a skeptic, and continued in unbelief, until after his elevation to a Judgeship in Michigan. He was converted through the influence of his wife, and united with the Methodist Episcopal Church. Distinguished in his profession, reliable in his religious ...
— Thirty Years in the Itinerancy • Wesson Gage Miller
... himself had studied, and that of the Lyceum, which he had founded, as the seat of his peripatetic system. But the older schools soon reappeared under new names: the Megarics, with an infusion of the doctrines of Democritus, revived in the skeptic philosophy of Pyrrhon (375-285 B.C.). Epicurus (342-370 B.C.) founded the school to which he gave his name, by a similar combination of Democritean philosophy with the doctrines of the Cyrenaics; the Cynics ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... "You are a skeptic! Very well. I convince nobody against his will. But wait! You have a strong face. Stand where you are." Extracting from another pocket a tiny pair of scissors and a sheet of carbon paper, Mr. Strange, with ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach
... the cynical smile of the skeptic etched itself at the corners of Farr's mouth—the flash of the nature the young man had hidden during ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... (unless to one's most intimate friend) of all matters of private scandal and defamation, though you should hear them a thousand times; for the parties affected always look upon the receiver to be almost as bad as the thief: and, whenever they become the topic of conversation seem to be a skeptic, though you are really a serious believer; and always take the extenuating part. But all this seeming ignorance should be joined to thorough and extensive private informations: and, indeed, it is the best method of procuring them; for most people have such a vanity in showing ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... enough to bear educating. His better half argued that, having so many children, they ought in reason to be exempted. Only people who had few children could spare the penny. But the one point on which the cobbler-skeptic of the Mile End Road got his way was this of the fees. It was a question of conscience, and Mrs. Crowl had never made application for their remission, though she often slapped her children in vexation instead. ...
— The Big Bow Mystery • I. Zangwill
... hard-headed skeptic, self-made and self-secure, who will not traffic with the literature that touches his life work, is seldom so confined to his own little shop that he will not, for recreation, take holiday tours into the literature of other men's lives and labors. The ...
— The Guide to Reading - The Pocket University Volume XXIII • Edited by Dr. Lyman Abbott, Asa Don Dickenson, and Others
... really assumes the very thing to be proved. King gets over the difficulty and reaches his conclusion by saying, "The Deity could have only one of two objects—his own happiness or that of his creatures."—The skeptic makes answer, "He might have another object, namely, the misery of his creatures;" and then the whole question is, whether or not he had this other object; or, which is the same thing, whether or not his nature is perfectly good. It must never be forgotten ...
— The Fallen Star; and, A Dissertation on the Origin of Evil • E. L. Bulwer; and, Lord Brougham
... Code's hard, strong hands closed upon his arms in a grip that brought a bellow of pain. In deadly fear of his life, he babbled protests, apologies, and pleadings in an incoherent medley that would have satisfied the most toughened skeptic. ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams
... true then that the old lawyer had become pious. He had heard the news before, but did not believe it. Now he had learned it as a fact. That strong-minded man who had been a skeptic all his days, had ridiculed and opposed religion, was now a subject of "the children's revival." What could it mean? Was there something in religion after all? Could it be that what these poor fanatics, as he had always called them, said about the ...
— Children's Edition of Touching Incidents and Remarkable Answers to Prayer • S. B. Shaw
... Veal himself opined that Mrs. Bargrave had been driven crazy by a cruel husband, and dreamed the whole story of the apparition. Now all this is sufficiently artful. To have vouched the fact as universally known, and believed by every one, nem. con., would not have been half so satisfactory to a skeptic as to allow fairly that the narrative had been impugned, and hint at the character of one of those skeptics, and the motives of another, as sufficient to account for their want of belief. Now to ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... I was an earnest seeker after Truth. I examined every religious teaching with a calm and unprejudiced attention. From an orthodox Protestant I became a skeptic, and a follower of Voltaire, Tom Paine, and Ingersoll; yet all the while I retained faith in a supreme intelligent Being who made all. Sick, weary, doubting, and despairing, I accidentally went into a Christian Science ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... is"—Flummers was holding forth among the night reporters at the central station—"Pessimist as he is, and a skeptic though he may be, papa goes through this life with his eyes open. Idle suggestion says, 'Shut your eyes, papa, and be happy,' but shrewdness says, 'Watch that fellow going along there.' I don't claim any particular credit for this; we ...
— The Colossus - A Novel • Opie Read
... and Britt will make 'em sit up and take notice," persisted the inventor. Forgetting Vona, desiring to impress a skeptic from the outside world, he followed Starr and ...
— When Egypt Went Broke • Holman Day
... their coming as apparitions. I always was, still am, a skeptic on the point of ghost stories in general, nevertheless I am a Christian, and I believe and know that we ...
— The Gray Nun • Nataly Von Eschstruth
... better than his, but for wit, quick repartee, general cheerfulness, he reminded me of my favourite heroine in literature, Sir Walter Scott's Catherine Seton! Later, I read with astonishment that Montaigne was an unbeliever, a skeptic, almost a cynic. I was extremely indignant; he seemed to me to be a very pious gentleman, with that wit and humour which I seldom found in professedly pious books; and to this day I cannot hear Montaigne ...
— Confessions of a Book-Lover • Maurice Francis Egan
... anything I don't believe. Don't misunderstand me, please." Pouring out a glass of wine. "Unfortunately I am so incredulous! Isn't it a pity? I am such a carping cynic; a regular skeptic that follows the old adage, 'Believe that story false that ought not to be true.' It's such a detriment to my work, too! A pretty scandal at the top of my column would make me famous, while a sprinkling of libels and lampoons would enable me to move down a story or two. But, after all, I'd feel ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... his design, however apparently transcending not alone the bounds of human invention, but those of divine creation, yet the proposed means to be employed were alleged to have been confined within the sober forms of sober reason. It was affirmed that, to a degree of more than skeptic scorn, Bannadonna had been without sympathy for any of the vain-glorious irrationalities of his time. For example, he had not concluded, with the visionaries among the metaphysicians, that between the finer mechanic forces and the ruder animal ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... we have found every trait of the Greek character: He is religious and superstitious; a skeptic, a pagan, and a pantheist.... He is a poet and a philosopher.... He abandons himself to every impulse of the Greek soul. But he is always fond of drawing back, of concentrating, of trying to encompass in a general form the sensations and ideas which sway him. His principal and latent ...
— Life Immovable - First Part • Kostes Palamas
... inconsiderable powers of reasoning and argument; one in particular, named Moung-Shwa-gnong; who would spend whole days at the zayat, and engage Mr. Judson in endless discussions.—Not satisfied with the Buddhist faith he had become a confirmed skeptic, and disputed every Gospel truth before he received it with much subtilty and ingenuity. But after a while he found that his visits at the zayat had attracted the notice of Government, that the viceroy on ...
— Lives of the Three Mrs. Judsons • Arabella W. Stuart
... It was the Skeptic, looking over my shoulder. He had chanced to be passing, saw me standing in the doorway in an attitude of adoration, and glanced in over my head. He had continued ...
— A Court of Inquiry • Grace S. Richmond
... disappointed being of mine there is a child hidden—a frank, sad, simple creature, who believes in the ideal, in love, in holiness, and all heavenly superstitions. A whole millennium of idyls sleeps in my heart; I am a pseudo-skeptic, a pseudo-scoffer. ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... so easily and well that his early desertion of fiction is surprising. His mocking spirit has often suggested comparison with Voltaire, whom he studied and admired. He too is a skeptic and an idol-breaker; but his is a kindlier irony, a less incisive philosophy. Perhaps, however, this influence led to lack of faith in his own work, to his loss of an ideal, which Zola thinks the real secret of his sudden change ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... is not without interest. Meeting Bayle in Holland, the ecclesiastic found the indefatigable skeptic most persistently citing Lucretius, in whose elaborate verse the atheistic materialism of Epicurus is developed and exalted. Others had already answered the philosopher directly; but the indignant Christian ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... foresight of far-off things, and could look beyond to-day's defeat to the coming victory for his cause. He had many bitter enemies. His intolerance and intellectual arrogance offended men. When a friend said to President Grant, "Sumner is a skeptic; I fear he does not believe in the Bible," Grant's instant retort was, "Certainly he does not; he ...
— The Battle of Principles - A Study of the Heroism and Eloquence of the Anti-Slavery Conflict • Newell Dwight Hillis
... until that which had ridden and hunted and passed so buoyantly through life should become but a few dry bones, a handful of dust. He was of his time, and its laxness of principle and conduct; if he held within himself the potential scholar, statesman, and philosopher, there were also the skeptic, the egotist, and the libertine. He followed the fashion and disbelieved much, but he knew that if he died to-night his soul would not stay with his body upon the hilltop. He wondered, somewhat grimly, what it would do when ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... presence and encircling love of the great powers? I would bring to my mountain the weary spirits who are obscured in the fetid city where life decays into rottenness; and call thither those who are in doubt, the pitiful and trembling hearts who are skeptic of any hope, and place them where the dusky vapors of their thought might dissolve in the inner light, and their doubts vanish on the mountain top where the earthbreath streams away to the vast, when the ...
— Imaginations and Reveries • (A.E.) George William Russell
... changed even as he spoke the flaming words that struggled so awkwardly to seize his mood of rapture—a thought the Earth poured through him for a moment. The bitter, half-mocking smile lay in them, and on the lips the cold and critical expression of the other Stahl, skeptic and science-man. A revulsion of feeling caught them both. But to O'Malley came the thought that once again he had been drawn—was being coaxed for examination ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood
... claim, and Theodore Parker stands a noble representative of Republican America. His place is still among the immortals who are not the creatures of an age, but its regenerators. For it is not the life of a great skeptic, but the work of a great believer, which is brought before us in these volumes. This uncompromising enemy of the creeds was the ally of their highest uses. His soul never lacked that dear and personal object of worship which is offered by the Christian Revelation in its common acceptance. He could ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... every day you quote your English poet, and believe him when he says: 'There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in your philosophy.' But I am accustomed to derision, and it does not offend me. Let me prove my power, so that even the most resolute skeptic dare doubt no longer. Judge of my skill to read the future by my ability in reading the past. I have come here—I have taken a long journey to look into the future of your new-born son. Before I begin, let me look into the past ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming
... number of arrests were made. This morning it was followed up by the announcement of the capture of Port Hudson. The guns are pealing for true, and the Yankees at headquarters may be seen skipping like lambs, for very joy. And I still disbelieve! Skeptic! The first thing I know that "Era" man will be coming here to convert me! But I don't, can't, won't believe it! If it is true,—but I find consolation in this faith: it is either true, or not true,—if it is true, it is all for ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... unbeliever, even if learned in the stars and old bones, ranked with him as a knave or a fool, and sometimes both. His pet joke, which was not original, was that there was only one letter of difference between septic and skeptic, and of the two the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... and enjoys it very tolerably well, although he has so slight a hold on it that it would not trouble him much to give it up. He said he hoped he should die at sea, because then it would be so little trouble to bury him. Me is a skeptic,—and when I asked him if he would not wish to live again, he spoke doubtfully and coldly. He said that he had been in England within two or three years—in his native county, Yorkshire—and finding his brother's children in very poor condition, he gave them sixty golden ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... Coast, I flew to New York. Ken Purdy called in John DuBarry, True's aviation editor, to hear the details. Purdy called him "John the Skeptic." After I told them what I ...
— The Flying Saucers are Real • Donald Keyhoe
... made Willet a skeptic. While he did not accept unquestioningly all the beliefs of Tayoga, neither did he wholly reject them. It might well be true that earth, air, trees and other objects were inhabited by spirits good or bad. At least it was a pleasing belief and he ...
— The Lords of the Wild - A Story of the Old New York Border • Joseph A. Altsheler
... skeptic. Bred to the profession of medicine and surgery, he became bogged in the depths of materialistic doubt. The microscope drew his thoughts downward until he could not see beyond second causes. The ...
— California Sketches, Second Series • O. P. Fitzgerald
... the glory of sacrifice, and the presence of Death, and not be moved to a contemplation of the fountain-head of these sublime mysteries. But it is the upper class which in particular has returned to the Church. Before the war, rationalist and genial skeptic, the educated Frenchman went to church because it was the thing to do, and because non-attendance would weaken an institution which the world was by no means ready to lay aside. This same educated Frenchman, brought face to face with the mystery of human existence, has felt ...
— A Volunteer Poilu • Henry Sheahan
... village. But they might not stay. They might be forced out soon after they sent up their signals. When the Germans turned on a curtain of fire succeeding the British fire this was further evidence of British success sufficient to convince any skeptic. The British curtain was placed beyond it to hold off any counter-attack and prevent sniping till the new occupants of the premises ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... day we gathered in the cool of the afternoon about our table of packing-boxes for an event which even I, whose role was that of skeptic, found exciting. Miss Browne was at last to produce her map and reveal the secret of the island. So far, except in general terms, she had imparted it to no one. Everybody, in coming along, had been buying a pig in a poke—though to be sure Aunt Jane had paid for it. The Scotchman, Cuthbert ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... tickled the bronzed neck. The hand of the plowman moved automatically upward as if to brush away a fly, and at this unconscious action the child, seized by a convulsion of laughter and fearing lest it explode, stuffed his fists into his mouth. In the opinion of this irreverent young skeptic his Uncle Dave was in a "tantrum" instead of a "trance," and he thought such a disease ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... temperament, what we ordinarily call progress, considering what it costs, will always seem a very dubious matter. William Ralph Inge, Dean of St. Paul's Cathedral, London, seems to be the most eminent modern example of the skeptic. ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... said the professor delightedly. "To temonstrate to an honest ant indellichent skeptic, is te rarest of brifileches. Ve vill now broceed to temonstrate. Here is our friendt Herr Amidon avokened in a car after fife years of lostness; he has anodder man's dotes, anodder man's dicket, letters—unt all. He gomes to Madame le Claire ant Blatherwick. He is hypnotized ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick |
