"Philosophize" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the 'History,' while all of his merits as a historian are not conspicuous, neither are some of his chief defects. Here the tendency to philosophize, to marshal stately sentences, and to be discursive, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... frequent with him as to his future career. He would leave that building up of a future family of Marquises,—if future Marquises there were to be,—to one of those young darlings whose bringing-up would manifestly fit them for the work. For himself he would perhaps philosophize, perhaps do something that might be of service,—would indulge at any rate his own views as to humanity;—but he would not burden himself with a Countess and a nursery full of young lords and ladies. He had often said to Roden, had often said to Vivian, that her ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope
... reflection, it is this that pushes to the fore, right under the eyes of consciousness, the torturing problems, the questions that we cannot gaze at without feeling giddy and bewildered. I have no sooner commenced to philosophize than I ask myself why I exist; and when I take account of the intimate connection in which I stand to the rest of the universe, the difficulty is only pushed back, for I want to know why the universe exists; and if I refer the universe to a Principle ...
— Creative Evolution • Henri Bergson
... explanations and discussions of principles, theories, broad social topics, and the like—when we expound, moralize, or philosophize,—our subject matter is general. We approach our readers or hearers on the thinking, the rational side of their natures. Our phraseology is therefore normally abstract. But when, on the other hand, we narrate an event or depict an appearance, our subject matter is specific. ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... animal fury or fear. For this reason all the ordinary representations of this subject are, I think, false and cold: the artist has not heard the shrieks, nor mingled with the fugitives; he has sat down in his study to convulse features methodically, and philosophize over insanity. Not so Tintoret. Knowing, or feeling, that the expression of the human face was, in such circumstances, not to be rendered, and that the effort could only end in an ugly falsehood, he denies himself ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin
... such a casualty as I speak of will in an instant obliterate them, as though they had never been. We are but clay, sir, potter's clay, as the good book says, clay, feeble, and too-yielding clay. But I will not philosophize. Tell me, was it your misfortune to receive any concussion upon the brain about the period I speak of? If so, I will with pleasure supply the void in your memory by more minutely rehearsing the ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... tables. They had no qualms; upon their faces was the hue of health, and they were eating as heartily as the creatures of the field or forest do, and with as little prejudice against surroundings. George Henry tried to philosophize again and to be like these people, but he failed. He noted before him on the table a jar of that abject stuff called carelessly either "French" or "German" mustard, stale and crusted, and remembered that once at a dinner he had declared that the best ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo
... broke down; my voice failed, my tongue stammered, and at last I was reduced to tears. Mine was no surface wound from a random shaft. The words had sunk deep into a vital part; had come with true aim, and cleft my soul asunder. For (if I may venture to philosophize on my own account) I conceive the case thus:-A well-conditioned human soul is like a target of some soft material. As life goes on, many archers take aim thereat; and every man's quiver is full of subtle and varied arguments, ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... this dance was foolish enough to philosophize. Everybody was out for a good time, and a Scotsman from the British embassy came up to claim Lady Clifton-Wyatt's hand and body for the next dance. Davidge had been mystically attuned anew to Mamise, and he found her in a mood for reconciliation. She liked him so well that when the Italian aviator ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... for the woman did not hinder him from thinking of life. He did not philosophize about this enigma, which was already stirring a feeling of alarm in his heart; he was not able to argue, but he began to listen attentively to everything that men said of life, and he tried to remember ...
— Foma Gordyeff - (The Man Who Was Afraid) • Maxim Gorky
... relation" between the straightness or want of straightness in a railroad and the speed of the train: ergo, the speed of the train, "instead of having any connection" with the locomotive and the force of steam, is "completely controlled" by the line of the road! It is by no means difficult to philosophize after this fashion; but if we are to have many professors of such philosophy, let the mediaeval cap-and-bells, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... repeat his prayers, and talk cheerfully to him when he was languid and fretful, and the small duties of life were too heavy for his feeble energies. Dot always took a large portion of my time; his movements were slow and full of tiny perversities; he liked to stand and philosophize in an infantile way when I wanted to be downstairs helping Deborah. Dot's fidgets, as I called them, were part of the ...
— Esther - A Book for Girls • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... was unsuccessful, and while awaiting trial upon several charges he had plenty of time to philosophize. Thanks to the work of Bob Cranston, Chief of the Special Service Department of the Canadian Lake Shores Railway, Nickleby's past record stood revealed and ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse
... understand you."—"If you do not understand me it will be my fault."—"You are very polite, but you must know that I have studied nothing but my prayer book."—That makes no difference; the pretty woman, ably led on, begins to philosophize without knowing it, arriving without effort at the distinction between good and evil, comprehending and deciding on the highest doctrines of morality and religion.—Such is the art of the eighteenth century, and the art of writing. ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... taken more than ordinary penetration to perceive anything but a kind of grandiose folly in Brother Hecker. The impulse to talk about the conversion of America, to plan it and advocate it, to proclaim it possible and prove it so, and to philosophize on the profoundest questions of the human reason, was irrepressible. This he did with an air of matured conviction and with the impact of conscious moral authority, but in terms as strikingly eccentric as the thoughts were lofty and inspiring, and in execrable French, the declaimer ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... philosophy is like courage—easy to assume. We strut and talk big; we call the politicians sharks, the soldiers fools; but does it do any good? The war will go on; the enemy will destroy our homes, separate our families, take away our bread and leave us to starve; but we have the privilege to philosophize, if we like. For myself, ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces in the Red Cross • Edith Van Dyne
... the other. The censure of all the Bishops, and of both Houses of Convocation; re-echoed, as it has been, through all ranks of the community, is a great fact;—a fact which I cordially recommend to Mr. Pattison's attention, when he would philosophize on the ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... the experience of all as thought by a synthetic mind. Hence the wealth of life depicted by Shakespeare serves only to point out the philosopher's problem, and to challenge his powers. Here he will find material, and not results; much to philosophize ...
— The Approach to Philosophy • Ralph Barton Perry
... ministering to those concrete experiences which are as obvious and as undefinable as color or sound. We can celebrate the positively good things, we can live them, we can create them, but we cannot philosophize about them. To the anaesthetic intellect we could not convey the meaning of joy. A creature that could reason but not feel would never know the value of life, for what is ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... turning, this renaissance of the early Christian humanitarianism, is going on in America, in Chicago, if you please, without leaders who write or philosophize, without much speaking, but with a bent to express in social service and in terms of action the spirit of Christ. Certain it is that spiritual force is found in the Settlement movement, and it is ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... that may spring from it. I am old and weak, I can bear little, and can scarce hope to see better days; nor is it any adequate compensation to know that Nature is young and strong and can bear much. Old men philosophize over the past, but the present is only a burthen and a weariness. The one lies before them like a placid evening landscape; the other is full of vexations and anxieties of housekeeping. It may be true enough that miscet haec illis, prohibetque Clotho fortunam ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... they?" said Mr. Lenox. "It's only a trifle after all, though, to be true to her nature, Vera must needs philosophize about it. It's ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... his books, he had gathered that Mendelssohn still professed Orthodox Judaism. A paradox this to Maimon, and roundly denied as impossible when he first heard of it. A man who could enter the lists with the doughtiest champions of Christendom, whose German prose was classical, who could philosophize in Socratic dialogue after the fashion of Plato—such a man a creature of the Ghetto! Doubtless he took his Judaism in some vague Platonic way; it was impossible to imagine him the literal bond-slave of that minute ritual, winding phylacteries round his left arm or shaking himself ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... the darkness. "No use being a damned fool, anyway, Dave," he said to himself, at length. "I got it—where I didn't expect it—but I guess that's the way with every one. The troubles we expect, don't happen, and then the trouble that we didn't expect gets us when we're not watching." He tried to philosophize; to get a fresh grip on himself. "Where are we, anyway?" he continued. "This country looks familiar." He got up again and walked about, finding his way back to the road. He went along it a little way. Vague impressions suggested that he should ...
— The Cow Puncher • Robert J. C. Stead
... rather badly against the nettles that grow rank and tall from the rich mud in the ditch below. Nothing soothes a nettle sting like philosophy and dock-leaf; so I shall rub a little of the leaf on my hand and then sit awhile on the Hole Farm gate here to philosophize about nettles and things generally, as is my humble wont. There is a great deal more in nettles, I believe, than most people are apt to imagine; indeed, the nettle-philosophy at present current with ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... national fever had thoroughly pervaded my blood—the national fever to win. Prosperity—writ large—demanded it, and Theodore Watling personified, incarnated the cause. I had neither the time nor the desire to philosophize on this national fever, which animated all my associates: animated, I might say, the nation, which was beginning to get into a fever about games. If I remember rightly, it was about this time that golf was introduced, tennis had become a commonplace, professional baseball was ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... intimacy; Nature, as he portrays things, is in nearer touch with the Heavenly Father than we should guess from Paul[10], and there is no hint in his recorded words that he held the ground to be under a curse. If we are to use abstract terms and philosophize his thought a little, we may agree that the four facts Jesus notes in Nature are its mystery, its regularity, its impartiality, and its peacefulness[11]. What he finds in Nature is not unlike what ...
— The Jesus of History • T. R. Glover
... laughs, the ladies proposed to take a walk, in order, I believe, to leave HERSCHEL and me together. We walked and talked round his great telescopes till it grew damp and dusk, then retreated into his study to philosophize. ...
— Sir William Herschel: His Life and Works • Edward Singleton Holden
... expenditure. Men and women flock in crowds to his shop. He lives at Albert Gate in a house big enough for a royal duke, and is the lord of ten thousand acres in Yorkshire. Barlywig cannot have been wrong, let that philosopher philosophize as he will!" But still the dream was there, crushing ...
— The Struggles of Brown, Jones, and Robinson - By One of the Firm • Anthony Trollope
... have come down to us, and nearly 2,000 of the inscriptions upon them are metrical. This particular group is of special interest to us, because the use of verse seems to tempt the engraver to go beyond a bare statement of facts and to philosophize a bit about the present and the future. Those who lie beneath the stones still claim some recognition from the living, for they often call upon the passer-by to halt and read their epitaphs, and as the Roman walked along the Appian Way two thousand ...
— The Common People of Ancient Rome - Studies of Roman Life and Literature • Frank Frost Abbott
... velvet mantle, I marvel how the poets and artists and scholars of olden times nursed those dreams which the world calls indolence, but which are the seeds that germinate into great achievements. How did Plato philosophize without the pipe? How did gray Homer, sitting on the temple-steps in the Grecian twilights, drive from his heart the bitterness of beggary and blindness? How did Phidias charm the Cerberus of his animal nature to sleep, while his soul entered the Elysian Fields and ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... Dolabella was immediately declared an enemy to the Republic. Cicero inveighs against him with all his force, and says that such as Dolabella is, he had been made by the cruelty of Antony. But he goes on to philosophize, and declare how much more miserable than Trebonius was Dolabella himself, who is so base that from his childhood those things had been a delight to him which have been held as disgraceful by other children. Then he turns ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... when I shone on her, and be dark when I was dark. No man ought to want such a thing. Yet she made life a delight to me; only she wanted that development which a better training, or even a harder training, might have given her; that subserving of the emotions to the"—he waved his hand—"I can't philosophize about her. We loved one another with our might, and ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... in no mood to philosophize. She hated the coming conference with her father to the utter exclusion of every other thought at that moment, and had hardly heard what ...
— The Wind Before the Dawn • Dell H. Munger
... sir, thus to philosophize, and must have seen and experienced more than your years ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks |
