"Contemplation" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... perhaps lead to the exercise of some more distinctively religious influence, we are flatly told by some that there is no need of recreation. Youth are on the brink of the grave, and should find enjoyment in singing psalms. Others tell us there is recreation enough in the contemplation of the heavenly bodies, and of the beauties of nature, and that these ought to satisfy the soul without its having recourse to lower joys. Now you and I like to sing psalms. They are suggestive to us of many rich and ...
— Amusement: A Force in Christian Training • Rev. Marvin R. Vincent.
... most certainly true. Why does talent gravitate to cities? Because there it works its best—because friction necessarily produces brilliancy. Nature is a great deceiver; she draws us on to admire her insinuating charms, and in the contemplation of them we lose ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman
... was there verse through which showed so plainly the Nature under whose auspices it was brought forth as those songs of Petrarch. I seem to feel that they were written in solitude, not sublime, but pleasing, and in a narrow valley shut out from contemplation of aught else. And I know, as I leave the Vaucluse behind me, how deep a hold the memory of the loved fountain must needs have taken upon the poet's mind, for I too have made me a picture of a river, and a grotto, and a shadowy pool, and a low brown house, and a stately ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... go from the soul outward. Gift is contrary to the law of the universe. Serving others is serving myself. I must absolve me to myself.' And what is myself? Let Fichte answer. 'I affirm that in what we call the knowledge or the contemplation of things, it is always ourselves that we know or contemplate: in every sentiment of consciousness it is only modifications of ourselves that we feel.' And again: 'The universe lives. From it arises a marvelous harmony that resounds deliciously ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... words, however, in explanation. That pleasure which is at once the most pure, the most elevating, and the most intense, is derived, I maintain, from the contemplation of the Beautiful. In the contemplation of Beauty we alone find it possible to attain that pleasurable elevation, or excitement, of the soul, which we recognize as the Poetic Sentiment, and which ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... prevalence of that uncontrolable disease. We are also in want of Salts, Castor-oil, Cream of Tartar, mignesea, and Mustard, as much as you can send well put up. I am greatly in hopes to be over the next spring, and try to wake up my colored friends in Virginia. We have a plan in contemplation which if accomplished will, I think insure my making one visit to America, that is, to purchase, or aid in the purchase of a vessel to run constantly from this, to America, to bring out our own supplies, emigrants, &c. ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various
... ages, and with every people, the arcana of life and death, the mysteries of birth, childhood, puberty, adolescence, maidenhood, womanhood, manhood, motherhood, fatherhood, have called forth the profoundest thought and speculation. From the contemplation of these strange phenomena sprang the esoteric doctrines of Egypt and the East, with their horrible accompaniments of vice and depravity; the same thoughts, low and terrible, hovered before the devotees ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... again became the order of the day. On the one hand there existed a large class of declaimers and needy orators who were interested in the revival of the subject; and on the other, there was a powerful body of humane people, to whom the contemplation of the sufferings of the negro people had become habitual, and who required little inducement to recur to such an exciting theme. But there was a cause for this display of philanthropy: the slave was still in chains, and was still suffering from the lash of the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... operations of that divine spirit by which they supposed themselves to be animated. A mode of worship was established, the most naked and most simple imaginable; one that borrowed nothing from the senses, but reposed itself entirely on the contemplation of that divine essence which discovers itself to the understanding only. This species of devotion, so worthy of the Supreme Being, but so little suitable to human frailty, was observed to occasion great disturbances ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume
... the family. It was entirely filled with a variety of scientific instruments, which seemed to be in constant requisition; the quaint, old latticed window was thrown wide open, and a telescope fixed at it, in the proper position for a contemplation of the heavenly bodies by night. At the other end of the room was fixed an apparatus for chemical experiments, and here Sir Michael was seated, poring over some liquid which he was subjecting to the influence of a spirit-lamp. He wore a black velvet cap, which contrasted ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... penetrated with the sublime image of the infinite, when gazing around them on the vast and boundless sea, when involuntarily the glance is attracted to the distant horizon, where air and water blend together, and the stars continually rise and set before the eyes of the mariner. This contemplation of the eternal play of the elements is clouded, like every human joy, by a touch ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt
... ensue a national bankruptcy and general ruin. It was said that they meant to throw the gates of Bedlam open, and let all the madmen loose. This suggested such dreadful images to the people's minds, and was indeed an act so fraught with new and unimaginable horrors in the contemplation, that it beset them more than any loss or cruelty of which they could foresee the worst, and drove many sane men nearly ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... and silver daybreak, that two brothers met in the street and spoke; though one was beginning the day and the other finishing it. The Rev. and Hon. Wilfred Bohun was very devout, and was making his way to some austere exercises of prayer or contemplation at dawn. Colonel the Hon. Norman Bohun, his elder brother, was by no means devout, and was sitting in evening dress on the bench outside "The Blue Boar," drinking what the philosophic observer was free to regard either as his last glass on Tuesday or his first on Wednesday. The ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... and although she was perfectly incomprehensible to me, I entertained an impression that there would be something coarse and treacherous in my dragging her as she really was (to say nothing of Miss Estella) before the contemplation of Mrs. Joe. Consequently, I said as little as I could, and had my face shoved ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... moody contemplation he rouses with a start, for Mayland's daughter is there. Her eyes are bent on a distorted thing that lies among the embers, and in the dying light of the flames it seems to move. She studies it close, then with a cry of pain and terror she falls upon ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... as it did yesterday," he went on. "Oh, it's big—it sure is!" he added. And he turned again to his contemplation of ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... inquisitive mind, philosophic turn, and deep reflection of the author, indeed, are every where conspicuous; but his opinions do not equally as in the first two volumes bear the signet mark of truth stamped upon them. They are more speculative and fanciful; founded rather on contemplation of future, than observation of present effects. When De Tocqueville painted the unrestrained working of democracy on political thought and parties, as he saw it around him in the course of his residence in America, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... places in every page or two, which might have been very laughable to an indifferent spectator, but which aggravated the Mays, father and son, to an intolerable extent. They were the two who suffered. As for Horace Northcote, who was not a great talker, it was a not disagreeable shield for his silent contemplation of Ursula, and the little things which from time to time he ventured to say to her. For conversation he had not the thirst which animated Reginald, and Ursula's talk, though lively and natural, was not like Phoebe's; but while the music went on he could sit by her in ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... miserably in my Mrs. Rogers," said he, and went off for solitary contemplation on ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... reserved than Isabel, usually preferred to receive rather than to bestow confidences. Only in unusual cases, such as the one now under contemplation, was Helen moved to such downright speech. But in this instance she acknowledged the presence of an irritation alien to her customary serenity, and unconsciously she hit on conversation as a soothing influence. ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... before he enters into the gate of his city, the citizens thereof go forth to meet him, so do those citizens of the Eternal Life go forth to meet the noble Soul; and they do thus because of his good works and acts of contemplation, which were of old rendered unto God and withdrawn from worldly affairs and thoughts. Hear what Tullius says in the person of Cato the elder: "It seems to me that already I see, and I uplift myself in the greatest desire to see, your fathers, whom I loved, and not ...
— The Banquet (Il Convito) • Dante Alighieri
... deadened one passion after the other, battled with the wild instinct of life, till at last, arrived at the fire, I relinquished all desire of life, and threw myself into the glow in order to sink my personality in the contemplation of Beatrice. But from this final liberation I was rudely awakened to be again, after all, what I had been before, and this was done in order to confirm the Catholic doctrine of a God Who, for His own glorification, ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 2 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... too much!" Strether helplessly sighed. "But you don't," he went on as if to get quickly away from the contemplation of that doom, "answer my question. Why ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... service of truth, or of his kind, to form ascetics, martyrs, sisters of charity and missionaries. Thus, throughout society, religion becomes at once a natural and precious instrumentality. On the one hand men require it for the contemplation of infinity and to live properly; if it were suddenly to be taken away from them their souls would be a mournful void, and they would do greater injury to their neighbors. Besides, it would be vain to attempt to take it away from them; the hand raised against it would encounter only its envelope; ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... seeing the world presented to the dog as it presents itself to us, or by putting ourselves in the dog's place. It is not false natural history, it is a fund of true human sentiment awakened by the contemplation of ...
— Ways of Nature • John Burroughs
... the members identified themselves with the more popular sects; but Joseph, while favorably impressed by the Methodists in comparison with others, confesses that his mind was sorely troubled over the contemplation of the strife and tumult existing among the religious bodies; and he hesitated. He tried in vain to solve the mystery presented to him in the warring factions of what professed to be the Church of Christ. Surely, thought he, these several churches, ...
— The Story of "Mormonism" • James E. Talmage
... that a man on a desert island, living constantly in contemplation of God's real work, would ...
— Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers • Arthur Brisbane
... refreshing for a time it became intolerable shortly. She challenged him, as a woman can, with the flash of her eyes, the quick music of her laugh, but he was marvelling at the width of the horizon, rapt in contemplation of the distant mountains, observing how a flower poised and nodded on its stalk, following the long, swooping flight of a bird or watching how the moon tramped down on the stars. So far as she could see he was unaware that her charms were ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... men whose minds had derived a peculiar character from the daily contemplation of superior beings and eternal interests. Not content with acknowledging, in general terms, an overruling Providence, they habitually ascribed every event to the will of the Great Being for whose power nothing was too vast, for whose inspection nothing was too minute. To ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... had written home from Leipzig. Nothing reveals more with respect to ourselves, than when we again see before us that which has proceeded from us years before, so that we can now consider ourselves as an object of contemplation. But, of course, I was as yet too young, and the epoch which was represented by those papers was still too near. As in our younger years we do not in general easily cast off a certain self- complacent conceit, this especially shows itself in despising what we have been but a little ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... the game the fact that her cabin was searched almost daily during her absence she derived grim enjoyment in contemplation of the searcher's repeated disappointment. Several attempts to surprise the marauder at his work proved futile, and she was forced to admit that in the matter of shrewdness and persistence, his ability exceeded her own. "The real test will come when ...
— The Gold Girl • James B. Hendryx
... his pain (a charity afforded to condemned persons ordinarily in those places and times), refused that ease, and embraced the whole torment, I take not this cup, but this vessel of mine own sins into my contemplation, and I pour them out here according to the motions of thy Holy Spirit, and any where according to the ...
— Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions - Together with Death's Duel • John Donne
... was his. Familiar to the wild bloom and brilliance of the West Indian islands, the soft tropical beauty of the scene now before him surpassed all he had ever seen, and, oblivious of the presence and voices of his brother officers as they conversed near him, he became lost in reflective and pleased contemplation of the radiant panorama of land, sea, and almost cloudless sky around him. Thirty miles away, yet so distinctly defined in the clear atmosphere that it seemed but a league distant from the ship, a perfect volcanic cone stood abruptly up from out the deep blue ...
— Rodman The Boatsteerer And Other Stories - 1898 • Louis Becke
... Ferailleur. Then he was innocent, and she held an undeniable, irrefutable proof of his innocence in her hands. How coolly and impudently Valorsay confessed his atrocious crime! "A bold stroke is in contemplation which, if no unfortunate and well-nigh impossible accident occur, will throw the girl into my arms." Marguerite shuddered. "The girl" referred to her, of course. "Thanks to the assistance of one of my friends," added the letter "I can place this proud damsel in a perilous, terribly ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... what you would call a true woman. She has a generous soul, strong affections, and a susceptibility which interferes with her serenity. She is not exempt from the trouble and snare into which the lot of women seems to drive them,—too close a contemplation of self, too nice a sensitiveness, which yet does not interfere with devotedness to others. She will be a devoted wife: but Margaret does not wait to be a wife to be devoted. Her life has been devotedness, and will be to the end. If she were left ...
— Deerbrook • Harriet Martineau
... composer's name), and these productions gave such evident proof of talent that his father deemed it desirable to get his friend Elsner to instruct him in harmony and counterpoint. At this time, however, it was not as yet in contemplation that Frederick should become a professional musician; on the contrary, he was made to understand that his musical studies must not interfere with his other studies, as he was then preparing for his entrance into the Warsaw Lyceum. ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... I say; but ma says a landed proprietor." Nevertheless, the landed proprietor, when he reached the boulder on the Red Dog highway, sat down in somewhat moody contemplation, with his head bowed over the broad cowhide brogues, that seemed to have already gathered enough of the soil to indicate his right to that title. Mamie, who had recovered her spirits, but had not lost her preoccupation, wandered off by herself in the meadow, or ascended the hillside, ...
— A Millionaire of Rough-and-Ready • Bret Harte
... found myself somebody; and while looking about me on the many well-dressed and very good-natured gentlemen who subsisted on the hope of your generosity, could not avoid the contemplation of what a glorious world this of ours must be, possessing as it does so many good hearted souls like yourself, so rich—but as indifferent to their own best interests. 'You will take supper, Mr. Smooth?' inquired the man behind ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton
... according to the intention she had hinted to her servant, towards the grove, where she had so often wandered with her beloved. She was wrapped up and lost in the contemplation of her approaching felicity. "And is every difficulty surmounted, and shall at last my fate be twined with Damon's? Sure, it is too much, it cannot be! Fate does not deal so partially with mortals. To bestow so vast a happiness ...
— Damon and Delia - A Tale • William Godwin
... analysis in "Ecce Homo"—of the claims of Christ and of the nature of His society, will convince any one who cares to make the inquiry of the outstanding difference between the system of Christianity in the original contemplation and its representations in modern life. Christianity marks the advent of what is simply a new Kingdom. Its distinctions from the Kingdom below it are fundamental. It demands from its members activities and responses of an altogether novel order. It is, in the conception of its Founder, a Kingdom ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond
... had been hitherto either plunged in deep contemplation or in an incipient slumber, "insert, I say, these very words: 'And with the heat of the morning, and anxiety of so rapid a march, with a numerous enemy in his rear, the Emperor was so thirsty, as never in his life to ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... their coarse ridicule—the few who sympathized in his disappointment advised him to return, and refused further assistance in what they considered so hopeless a cause. At the same time he was informed that a murderous project was in contemplation against the natives. ...
— The Moravians in Labrador • Anonymous
... appreciated his reserve, his holding back, where others would have been so ready to pounce in. For the first time, she considered him in the light of a lover, and she saw him differently. As if the mere contemplation of such a change brought her nearer to him, she was stirred by a new sensation, which had him as its object. And under the influence of this feeling, she told herself that perhaps just in this gentler, kindlier love, which only sought her welfare, true happiness ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... one, and even the discomforts caused by his ailments, which were at times very acute for days together, never prevented him from enjoying the contemplation of his flowers, nor disturbed the serenity of his temper, nor caused ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences Vol 2 (of 2) • James Marchant
... the carriage; it was so small to the eye that it might have been made for a performance by canaries; Paula's face being still smaller, as she leaned back in her seat, idly looking down at him. There seemed something roguish in her attitude of criticism, and to be no longer the subject of her contemplation he entered the tunnel out of ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... the mountains and the sea, leaving only one victim behind—the Quigley's little goat, who had been struck dead by a lightning flash, to the sorrow of her owners, and the awe of all Lisconnel in contemplation of the black and white body stretched out still ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... enough to the island by that time to perceive that wonderful changes had indeed taken place, and Van der Kemp, who had been for some time silently absorbed in contemplation, at last turned to his ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne
... the Mongol? he wondered. But there was no time for idle contemplation. The scene inside the room ...
— Supermind • Gordon Randall Garrett
... the mismanagement of our internal resources; the expediency of conciliating the Roman Catholics; the subjects of parliamentary privileges and reform, &c. On the subject of parliamentary reform he remarked:—"This question has long been one of my most serious contemplation. I took an active part in it at an early age: I pursued my object with all that eager hope and sanguine expectation so natural to the ardour of youth. I will not say that in subsequent times there ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... are not to be found in his subject. The warning must be reiterated that here as elsewhere we are too desirous, both writers and readers, of clear definition where none is possible. We do not stop where the object of our contemplation stops for our eyes. For my own part I must say that there is much in Spinoza which is beyond me, much which I cannot EXTEND, and much which, if it can be extended, seems to involve contradiction. But I have also found his works productive beyond those of almost any man I know of that acquiescentia ...
— Pages from a Journal with Other Papers • Mark Rutherford
... filling my mind with indigestible conceptions of life present and to come, mysteries for the contemplation of a philosopher, not for a boy of ten; the recognition of my total depravity, as manifested in the trivial transgressions of a thoughtless child, to whom life had hardly yet offered a duty to fulfill or transgress; ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... he knew not: certain he was that when on the point of leaving Endelstow he had felt none of that exquisite nicety of poignant sadness natural to such severances, seeing how delightful a subject of contemplation Elfride had been ever since. Had he begun to love her when she met his eye after her mishap on the tower? He had simply thought her weak. Had he grown to love her whilst standing on the lawn brightened ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... infuriated savages will enjoy," remarked Mr. Fairfax. "The more I think of it, the more I shrink from the contemplation of the horrible butchery that will probably follow this serious ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer
... CONTEMPLATION, bring thy waking dreams To this umbrageous vale at noon-tide hour, While full of thee seems every bending flower, Whose petals tremble o'er the shadow'd streams! Give thou HONORA's image, when her beams, Youth, beauty, kindness, shone;—what time she wore That smile, of gentle, yet resistless ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... are the channels through which the phrenologist derives his facts. In society, whichever way he turns, they are constantly being presented for his contemplation. Besides there is not a city or town of any note that does not contain a collection of authentic casts of well-known persons; and up to the year 1853, the gallery of Mr. De Ville, in London, contained the largest and most ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, February 1887 - Volume 1, Number 1 • Various
... he was very fond of Mr. Chamberlaine, and greatly admired him. "He is the most perfect philosopher I ever met," Fenwick would say, "and has gone to the very centre depth of contemplation. In another ten years he will be the great Akinetos. He will eat and drink, and listen, and be at ease, and desire nothing. As it is, no man that I know disturbs other people so little." On the other hand, Mr. Chamberlaine ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... love, And, roughly shaken, face the useless truth; No answer to brute fact has e'er been found. Slaves of your slaves, caged in your furnished rooms, Ushered to meals when reft of appetite— Though hungry, bound to wait a stated hour— Your dearest contemplation broken off By the appointed summons to your bath; Racked with more thought for those whom you may flog Than for those dear; obsessed by your possessions With a dull round of stale anxieties;— Soon maintenance grows the extreme reach of hope For those held in respect, as in a vice, By citizens ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various
... completed the panorama. The sun setting in mild radiance after a most lovely summer day, and the full moon shining forth in all her luster, gave it a wondrous richness and beauty of light and shadow. I was loth indeed to tear myself away from its contemplation and commence the tedious descent of the now darkened circular way up and down the ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... Morris, who had entered the room on Abe's heels; but the retort passed unnoticed so far as Morris was concerned, since he was absorbed in the contemplation ...
— Abe and Mawruss - Being Further Adventures of Potash and Perlmutter • Montague Glass
... beginneth not at Definitions, it beginneth either at some other contemplation of his own, and then it is still called Opinion; Or it beginneth at some saying of another, of whose ability to know the truth, and of whose honesty in not deceiving, he doubteth not; and then the Discourse is not so ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes
... one for him;—the children's dinner and their May-games had kept his hands full, and not till sunset, when the chimes of the church began to ring for evening service, had he been able to snatch a moment to himself for quiet contemplation. The dewy freshness of the garden, perfumed by the opening blossoms of the syringa, imparted its own sense of calm and grave repose to his mind,—and as he paced slowly up and down the gravel walk in front of his study window watching the placid beauty of the deepening night, ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... could with patience be nothing almost unto eternity. The second was that of Origen; that God would not persist in his vengeance for ever, but, after a definite time of his wrath, would release the damned souls from torture; which error I fell into upon a serious contemplation of the great attribute of God, his mercy; and did a little cherish it in myself, because I found therein no malice, and a ready weight to sway me from the other extreme of despair, whereunto melancholy and contemplative natures are too easily disposed. A third there is, which ...
— Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend • Sir Thomas Browne
... worth a moment's contemplation?" says Rylton, pressing her gently into a deep lounging chair that seems to swallow up her little figure. "It has its own ...
— The Hoyden • Mrs. Hungerford
... suspension of all his active powers to become absorbed and swallowed up in the Infinite.[130] Plato and his followers sought by an immediate abstraction to apprehend "the unchangeable and permanent Being," and, by a loving contemplation, to become "assimilated to the Deity," and in this way to attain the immediate consciousness of God. The Neo-Platonic mystic sought by asceticism and self-mortification to prepare himself for divine communings. He would contemplate the divine perfections in ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... phantom of his own evoking; and, so far as I am informed, other impugners of is being built have, absolutely, no argument whatever against it over and beyond their repugnance to novelty. Subjected to a little untroubled contemplation, it would, I am confident, have ceased long ago to be matter of controversy; but the dust of prejudice and passion, which so distempers the intellectual vision of theologians and politicians, is seen to make, ...
— The Verbalist • Thomas Embly Osmun, (AKA Alfred Ayres)
... buildings in the Allees d'Or1eans, and regarded by the Bordelais for the moment as the most brilliant feature of their city. Here were pyramids of bottles, mountains of bottles, to say nothing of cases and cabinets of bottles. The contemplation of these glittering tiers was of course not very convincing; and indeed the whole arrangement struck me as a high impertinence. Good wine is not an optical pleasure, it is an inward emotion; and if there ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... will indulge myself only with one phrase from the Dean's memoir of Dr. Chalmers:—"Chalmers's greatest delight was to contrive plans and schemes for raising degraded human nature in the scale of moral living. The favourite object of his contemplation was human nature attaining the highest perfection of which it is capable, and especially as that perfection was manifested in saintly individuals, in characters of great acquirements, adorned with ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... me, gentlemen, for a little, while I dwell in some detail upon those evils of tyranny with which you are only too familiar; I shall thus enable you to realize the extent of my services, and to enjoy the contemplation of sufferings from which you have escaped. Ours was not the common experience: we had not one tyranny, one servitude to endure, we were not subjected to the caprice of a single master. Other cities have had their tyrant: it was reserved for us to have two tyrants at once, to groan beneath ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... got the alarm first. He had been furtively repairing the viewscreen and thinking dark thoughts the while. There was sick dread for him in the contemplation of the future, for after this last unfortunate blunder DeCastros would be certain to keep his promise and have him examined. This might very well be his last voyage, and Mr. Wordsley had known for quite a ...
— The Marooner • Charles A. Stearns
... can raise his mind to the contemplation of the government of North-America, ruling over a perfectly free continent, may see in the future such a picture of national greatness as the world never before realized. Every State attracting the eager ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... course I'm right," continued Lightbody, unaware of his friend's critical contemplation. "Haven't I worked out ...
— Murder in Any Degree • Owen Johnson
... mouth or smell in the nose, or any other perceptible heat of fiery quality that warms the breast or any other part of the body, or any other thing that can be felt by a bodily sense, even if it is not so refreshing and agreeable, all this is not contemplation or observation; but in respect of the spiritual virtues, and those of celestial perception and love towards God, which accompany true contemplation, only evil secondary matters, even if they appear to be laudable and good. All such kinds of sensation may be good if produced ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer
... air, which has not absorbed the minds and stirred the hearts of other men till it has received a name sacred among all peoples. Since I have learnt that it is allowed to man, without degrading his reason, to people the universe and interpret it by his dreams, I live wholly in the contemplation of the universe; and when the sight of the misery and crime in the world bruises my heart and shakes my reason, I fall back upon my dreams. I say to myself that, since all men are united in their love of the works of God, some day they will also be united in their love ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... as deep as one can have who embarks on enterprises in which one regrets the means in contemplation of the end, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... a regulation thought on the advantageous marriage he was bound to make with a woman of family as good as his own, and of purse much longer. But as an object of contemplation for the present, as objective spirit rather than corporeal presence, Grace Melbury would serve to keep his soul alive, and to relieve the ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... Barbicane's contemplation of his rival was quickly interrupted by the cheers of the crowd. These cries became even so frantic and the enthusiasm took such a personal form that Michel Ardan, after having shaken a thousand hands in which he nearly left his ten fingers, was ...
— The Moon-Voyage • Jules Verne
... evening—a grand display of fire-works. A miniature steam-boat, gayly decorated with flags, swept to and fro, carrying passengers to the different landing-places. Gondolas, with peaked prows and variegated canopies, lay floating upon the still water, that lovers might quench their flames in the contemplation of its crystal depths, or draw fresh inspiration from the blaze of artificial fires. Soon a wild outburst of music was heard; then from the opposite shore the whole heavens were lighted up with a flood of rockets, and the ears were stunned by their explosions. Down through ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... heaven's high city I direct my journey, Whose spangled suburbs entertain mine eye; Mine eye, by contemplation's great attorney, Transcends the crystal pavement of the sky: But what is heaven, great God, compared to thee? Without thy presence, heaven's no ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... the mode of narration, which he who does not feel, need be made of no "penetrable stuff." There is something in the character of Christ too (leaving religious faith quite out of the question) of more sweetness and majesty, and more likely to work a change in the mind of man, by the contemplation of its idea alone, than any to be found in history, whether actual or feigned. This character is that of a sublime humanity, such as was never seen on earth before, nor since. This shone manifestly both in his words and actions. We see it in his washing the Disciples' feet ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... not arguments founded on the visionary contemplation of remote or improbable dangers. Their urgent necessity must be obvious to every mind. So long as man shall continue to navigate the ocean, and the tempests shall hold their course over its surface, in every age and on every coast, disasters by sea, shipwrecks, and peril to human ...
— An Appeal to the British Nation on the Humanity and Policy of Forming a National Institution for the Preservation of Lives and Property from Shipwreck (1825) • William Hillary
... quiet contemplation for a time. Then the King said: "Tell us about the wages of these workmen. The proper adjustment of wages has always been a source of much trouble ...
— Added Upon - A Story • Nephi Anderson
... there. She told him that her beauty increased with such intensity at every fresh ascent among the stars, that he would no longer have been able to bear the smile; and they were now in the seventh Heaven, or the planet Saturn, the retreat of those who had passed their lives in Holy Contemplation. ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... and thereby the actual effect of extreme income taxation is not confined to the relatively small number of people in possession of very large incomes directly affected by it. The apprehension caused by the contemplation of an excessively high ratio of taxation is contagious and apt to react unfavorably ...
— Government Ownership of Railroads, and War Taxation • Otto H. Kahn
... imperfect, and the reserve which we had placed upon them was quite out of all proportion to their merit. It must surely be a mistake! We followed Isobel across the room. A little elderly gentleman was sitting before a desk, engaged in the leisurely contemplation of a small open ledger. Isobel had halted in front of him. There was a delicate flush of pink on her cheeks, and her eyes ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... in the fruition of their contemptible desires! Let them set up a thing called society and worship it; let them lose themselves in the contemplation of objects whose beauty they can never appreciate save by counting the cost; let them disgrace the names their honest fathers bore, by striving to establish their descent from houses stained with crime and denied with ...
— An American Politician • F. Marion Crawford
... child's play—let me breathe freely again. Well do you know I love you. O God! why do you return to a theme so bitter and profitless to both? Come, let us look together on Miriam sleeping, and gather strength and courage from such contemplation. ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... the protection which, consistently with the Constitution and the laws, can be given, will be cheerfully given to all the States, when lawfully demanded, for whatever cause—as cheerfully to one section as to another.... I hold that, in contemplation of universal law, and of the Constitution, the Union of these States is perpetual. Perpetuity is implied, if not expressed, in the fundamental law of all National Governments. It is safe to assert that no Government proper ever had ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... combined parts, and new or extraordinary contents, the lectures of the fifteenth century professors would not have been worth the paper on which they were written. Bracciolini, then, would never, in the contemplation of turning a professor, have spoken of "producing something worth reading"; nor, for the discharge of professorial duties, would he speak of requiring "retirement and leisure for literary work." It is clear that Mr. Shepherd is altogether wrong in ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... Conway, who was charged with the conduct of business in the House of Commons, and Charles Townshend, who was responsible for the direction of the finances, begged for some glimpse of light as to what was in contemplation. Chatham's answers were sullen and mysterious. He must decline any discussion with them; he did not want their assistance; he had fixed on a person to take charge of his measure in the House of Commons. This person was a member who ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... was walking up and down absorbed in the marked contemplation of the ship's fore and aft trim; but when I saw him squat on his heels in the slush at the very edge of the quay to peer at the draught of water under her counter, I said to myself, "This is the captain." And presently ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... about bank-full, and if anybody had questioned my ability to run any crossing between Cairo and New Orleans without help or instruction, I should have felt irreparably hurt. The idea of being afraid of any crossing in the lot, in the DAY-TIME, was a thing too preposterous for contemplation. Well, one matchless summer's day I was bowling down the bend above island 66, brimful of self-conceit and carrying my nose as high as a giraffe's, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... The contemplation of Nature, and his own relation to her, produced in Faraday a kind of spiritual exaltation which makes itself manifest here. His religious feeling and his philosophy could not be kept apart; there was an habitual overflow of the one into ...
— Faraday As A Discoverer • John Tyndall
... out of a bankrupt Germany will by no means solve the material problem. For labour will be nearly as scarce as money; the call for labour in every field cannot fail to surpass in its urgency any call in history. The simple contemplation of the gigantic job will be staggering. To begin with, the withered and corrupt dead will have to be excavated from the cellars, and when that day comes those will be present who can say: "This skeleton was So-and-So's child," "That must have been my mother." ...
— Over There • Arnold Bennett
... me. My boast is not that I deduce my birth From loins enthroned,[339-13] and rulers of the earth; But higher far my proud pretensions rise,— The son of parents passed into the skies. And now, farewell!—Time, unrevoked,[340-14] has run His wonted course; yet what I wished is done. By contemplation's help, not sought in vain, I seem to have lived my childhood o'er again,— To have renewed the joys that once were mine, Without the sin of violating thine; And, while the wings of fancy still are free, And I can view this mimic show of thee, Time has but half succeeded in his theft,— Thyself ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... be attended with two servants well armed. Fulvius, on the other side, made his preparations and collected the populace. Caius at that time returning from the market-place, made a stop just before his father's statue, and fixing his eyes for some time upon it, remained in a deep contemplation; at length he sighed, shed tears, and departed. This made no small impression upon those who saw it, and they began to upbraid themselves, that they should desert and betray so worthy a man as Caius. They therefore went directly to his house, remaining ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... to Walden for study and contemplation, and because, as he said, he had a little private business with himself. He found that by working about six weeks in the year he could meet all his living expenses, and then have all his winter and most of his summers free and clear for study. He found that to maintain one's ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... beset me. It was not what usually goes by that name: no one ever accused me of an approach to haughtiness, neither was I boastful or forward, as far as I know; but I delighted to model my own character according to the standard set forth in my foolish books, and by the contemplation of them I hoped to succeed. I loved to mark in others a mean, ungenerous, selfish, or malicious trait, and to contrast with it my own high-flown notions of the opposite qualities. My memory was well stored with ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth
... colonizationists for expressing our opinions of their project as connected with our happiness, their manifest determination to effectuate their object regardless of our consent, abundantly corroborate the opinion we have long since entertained. We turn, however, from the contemplation of the persecution and oppression, which, it seems, are in reserve for us, to notice, briefly, the moving cause of this virulent and relentless attack upon our rights and happiness. "The census just taken," says A Marylander, "admonishes us in the strongest manner, ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison
... second viand of noble worth, This delicacy, Must be slowly eaten by thee In contemplation Of what the Lord of all the earth In agony Suffer['e]d for thy salvation. 112 This new torture suddenly He allowed to reach His brain, That so thy wit And sense might be restored to thee, That perished from thee utterly, Yea ...
— Four Plays of Gil Vicente • Gil Vicente
... pious man reclined his head on the bosom of contemplation, and was absorbed in the ocean of a revery. At the instant when he awaked from his vision, one of his friends, by way of pleasantry, said, What rare gift have you brought us from that garden, where you have been recreating? He replied, I fancied to myself and said, when I can reach the rose-bower, ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... luncheon. Jack was never accorded an invitation. On these occasions, the lovers would play at being ordinary friends but with poor success. Honor would avoid meeting the doctor's eyes, while the doctor's eyes were unable to stray long from contemplation of her engaging face which had never looked so lovable ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi
... father never occupied as their property while the Roman people, having undertaken the patronage of the liberty of the Greeks, deem it incumbent on their faith and constancy not to abandon it. As they have delivered Greece from Philip, so they have it in contemplation to deliver, from Antiochus, all the states of Asia which are of the Grecian race. For colonies were not sent into Aeolia and Ionia to be enslaved to kings; but with design to increase the population, and to propagate that ancient race in every part ...
— History of Rome, Vol III • Titus Livius
... suddenly remembering his errand, walked rapidly down the corridor. He paused before a round-arched, doorless portal, which led into a large sunny room. In the embrazure of one of the windows, a young girl was sitting, with a drawing-board in her lap, apparently absorbed in the contemplation of a marble relief which was suspended upon the wall. From where Cranbrook stood, he could see her noble profile clearly outlined against the white wall; a thick coil of black hair was wound about the back of her head, and a dark, tight-fitting dress fell in simple folds about her magnificent ...
— Ilka on the Hill-Top and Other Stories • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... But of the propriety and utility of holding up the distant mark of attainable perfection, we shall enter more fully toward the close of this address. We turn with pleasure to the contemplation of that small but glorious band, whom we may truly distinguish by the name of thinking and disinterested patriots.[6] These are the men who have encouraged the sympathetic passions till they have become irresistible habits, and made their ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... culminating period of the summer season, it is natural that the civic mind should turn itself to the contemplation of sweet rural things, including shady groves, lunch-baskets, wild flowers, sandwiches, ...
— Punchinello Vol. 1, No. 21, August 20, 1870 • Various
... in London, called upon Johnson. Though he had some scruples about doing business at that season, he received his visitors with much civility. They came to inform him that a new edition of the English poets, from Cowley downward, was in contemplation, and to ask him to furnish short biographical prefaces. He readily undertook the task, a task for which he was pre-eminently qualified. His knowledge of the literary history of England since the Restoration was unrivalled. That knowledge he had derived partly ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... to the west of Cabo Blanco. M. Bonpland and myself examined that point of the coast during our second abode at La Guayra. A ravine, called the Quebrada de Tipe, descends from the table-land of Caracas towards Catia. A plan has long been in contemplation for making a cart-road through this ravine and abandoning the old road to La Guayra, which resembles the passage over St. Gothard. According to this plan, the port of Catia, equally large and secure, would supersede that of La Guayra. Unfortunately, however, all that ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... East End of London upon Canada—a proceeding to which the Canadians would very naturally object—but to form a Home on that side to be fed from the Homes on this, and so to remove from the old scenes of vice and temptation those who had been previously trained in the refuges here. She has it in contemplation to take a large hotel in Canada, and convert it into an institution of this kind; and I fancy it was the possibility that publicity might aid this larger scheme which eventually induced the good lady to let the world so far know what she is doing. At all events, she ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... had learned that her husband was returning she had never, by sign or word, reverted to the fact. Except for a gleam of tenderness, now and then, when Cicely was brought to her, she seemed to have sunk back into herself, as though her poor little flicker of consciousness were wholly centred in the contemplation of its pain. It was not that her mind was clouded—only that it was immersed, absorbed, in that dread mystery of disproportionate anguish which a capricious fate had laid on it.... And what if she recovered, as they called it? If the flood-tide of pain should ebb, leaving her stranded, a ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... Ancient Illusion it is, without which nothing happens, nothing either goes or stands still. If it halts in its career, it merely while slumbering gathers new force; it presently wakes up, and then see who can master it!..." He smiles whimsically, nodding to himself, at the contemplation of the instance of all this uppermost in his mind, the events of the evening before. "How peaceful, in its adherence to good customs, approved in conduct and deed, lies in the heart of Germany my beloved Nuremberg! But late upon a night, a man there is ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... being bold. Certainly she was handsome enough to make it difficult for a young fellow to keep from staring at her. She had an abundance of very soft, dark hair, worn almost severely, as if its profusion necessitated repression; and I am compelled to admit that her fine eyes expressed a distant contemplation—obviously of habit not of mood—so pronounced that one of her enemies (if she had any) might have described them ...
— Beasley's Christmas Party • Booth Tarkington
... from the land to continue her voyage up the river, the Hawkinses were richer by twenty-four hours of experience in the contemplation of human suffering and in learning through honest hard work how to relieve it. And they were richer in another way also. In the early turmoil an hour after the explosion, a little black-eyed girl of five years, frightened and crying bitterly, was struggling through the throng in the Boreas' ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... Mark tried to picture the scene as it last met his eyes; but turned from the contemplation with a shudder; and it was with a sigh of relief that he once more felt the firm planks of the ...
— Mother Carey's Chicken - Her Voyage to the Unknown Isle • George Manville Fenn
... Eschscholtz remained at Ross, in order to prosecute some botanical researches, intending to rejoin us by means of an Aleutian baidar, several of which were shortly to proceed to St. Francisco in search of otters. This promised chase was a gratifying circumstance to me, as I had it in contemplation to examine several of the rivers that fall into the Bay of St. Francisco, for which purpose the small Aleutian vessels would probably prove extremely serviceable. The north-west wind is prevalent here during summer, and ...
— A New Voyage Round the World, in the years 1823, 24, 25, and 26, Vol. 2 • Otto von Kotzebue
... most difficulties of the kind—I would be very cautious, always on my guard, consider Miss Vernon rather as a companion than an intimate; and all would do well enough. With these reflections I fell asleep, Miss Vernon, of course, forming the last subject of my contemplation. ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... own, and I need not here dwell on their respective merits as men, or as commanders of armies, except that each possessed special qualities of mind and of character which fitted them in the highest degree for the work then in contemplation. ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... creak and shoes to scrape upon the carpet. I took my eyes off the Time Traveller's face, and looked round at his audience. They were in the dark, and little spots of colour swam before them. The Medical Man seemed absorbed in the contemplation of our host. The Editor was looking hard at the end of his cigar—the sixth. The Journalist fumbled for his watch. The others, as far ...
— The Time Machine • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... a handful of roses, she found Lizzie absorbed in admiring contemplation of her new boots, as she ate sponge-cake in ...
— Marjorie's Three Gifts • Louisa May Alcott
... suttinly is curious." Such was his opening remark, following the water application. "An' also, dey suttinly do git up some mouty curious laws." He paused a moment as though in a still slightly dazed contemplation of the statutory idiosyncrasies of the Caucasian, and then added the key words: "F'rinstance, now, dey got a law dat you got to keep lions an' tigers in a cage. Yassuh, da's de law. Can't no circus go 'bout de country widout de lions an' de tigers ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... you, and—" as Marian looked at Miss Grimley's thin, freckled face, and reddish, sandy locks, and could not help smiling, he continued, "when that would not quite do, I went on trying to turn each maid of honour into you, till, just as I gave you up, I saw young Dashwood fixed in contemplation; and well he might be, for there was something so majestic as could be nothing but Zenobia, Queen of the East, or ...
— The Two Guardians • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... Given that compulsion, in my imagination the double must have learnt a lesson, too. If we can learn by contemplation, can we not, must we not, learn by being contemplated? Life is permeated by reciprocity. I can imagine another sermon growing out of ...
— The Dweller on the Threshold • Robert Smythe Hichens
... taking my observations among the pilgrims at Kief I was struck with the fact, not only that a superstitious faith, but that a degraded art blinds the eye to the beauty of nature. It is one of the high services of true art to lead the mind to the contemplation, to the love and the better understanding, of the works of creation. But, on the contrary, it is the penalty of this Byzantine art to close the appointed access between nature and nature's God. An art which ignores ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various
... Government and that of Buenos Ayres, occurring several years ago, this Government has remained unrepresented at that Court, while a minister from it has been constantly resident here. The causes of irritation have in a great measure passed away, and it is in contemplation, in view of important interests which have grown up in that country, at some early period during the present session of Congress, with the concurrence of the Senate, to restore diplomatic relations ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... But most people, as Arcesilaus said, think it right to inspect minutely and in every detail, perusing them alike with the eyes of the body and mind, other people's poems and paintings and statues, while they neglect to study their own lives, which have often many not unpleasing subjects for contemplation, looking abroad and ever admiring other people's reputations and fortunes, as adulterers admire other men's wives, and think cheap ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... contemplation of her beauty, I did not for some time think of inquiring into material particulars. But there is a tablet on the pedestal which tells all that is known. This statue is called the 'Venus Accroupie,' ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... occupation kept him away from his picture. As his health was good, and his frame vigorous though susceptible, this state of excitement was at first rather pleasing than otherwise. He indulged himself, therefore, with those agitating visions, as they may be called, which the contemplation or recollection of his Lucifer called up before his mind. At length, however, the idea of the mighty fallen angel, whose form he had delighted to clothe with terror and sublimity, began to present itself under a new character to his mind; and instead ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 399, Supplementary Number • Various
... (Fig. 4), the old ideas that surged through the minds of the Predynastic Egyptians, as they contemplated the desiccated remains of the dead, were strongly reinforced. The earlier people's thoughts were turned more specifically than heretofore to the contemplation of the nature of life and death by seeing the bodies of their dead preserved whole and incorruptible; and, if their actions can be regarded as an expression of their ideas, they began to wonder what was lacking in these physically complete bodies to prevent them ...
— The Evolution of the Dragon • G. Elliot Smith
... 6th or 7th of March he will be sufficiently recovered, or rather will have been recovered a sufficient time to make it proper to take his commands for opening the Parliament. If not, you will see by the despatch the nature of the measures which we have in contemplation; and I can have no doubt of your agreeing, that no principle which we have ever maintained would require or even justify us in putting the Prince of Wales in such a situation as to enable him to overturn ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... New Orleans Porter was sent to Ship Island to await the attack that was in contemplation upon New Orleans. He was recalled by Admiral Farragut to aid him in the siege of Vicksburg. In passing the batteries Porter had three of his vessels disabled and twenty-nine men killed and wounded. The capture of that last Confederate stronghold on the Mississippi was a severe ...
— Dewey and Other Naval Commanders • Edward S. Ellis
... of any official or political standing can either influence or dispose of a certain amount of patronage; to such, life must sometimes be made a heavy burden. Human nature shrinks from the contemplation of what each successive President must be doomed to undergo. His nerves ought to be of iron, and his conscience of brass, or a Gold Coast Governorship might prove a less dangerous dignity. The character best fitted for the post would be ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence |
