"Skeptic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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 principle of ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... 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 taste of ...
— The Galaxy Primes • Edward Elmer Smith
... Scotty insisted. "But since you're such a skeptic, you can wait until we've hauled in the food. Come on, scientist. And unless you keep an open mind until you hear the evidence, we'll take your ...
— The Blue Ghost Mystery • Harold Leland Goodwin
... is. He is very poor. But you are very attractive. There, I'm a skeptic about men, but you can trust Peter. Only don't fall in love with him. It will be years before he can marry. And don't let him fall in love with you. He ...
— The Street of Seven Stars • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... of miracles with fresh attention. His belief in his own powers was evidently so sincere that even a skeptic could not fail to ...
— The Dude Wrangler • Caroline Lockhart
... one. But I gave the same test to try father, which also proved a failure. But 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 ...
— A Woman's Life-Work - Labors and Experiences • Laura S. Haviland
... is no such thing as moral responsibility. This makes all reform or efforts at staying the tide of evil useless. Oftentimes the heart of the man who has ceased to read his Bible gets the victory over this dreadful philosophy, and it is not remarkable that the skeptic becomes the exponent of freedom, charging like a host of war upon all institutions of slavery. Liberal theology puts its one hand on the dogmatist who tells him to accept literal infallibility, and its other on the sincere lover of men who has lost ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Volume 10 (of 10) • Various
... that warrior brow Passed, like a cloud, away, And tears coursed down the rugged cheek That flowed not till that day. "Not—not in mine," with choking voice, The skeptic made reply; "But in thy mother's holy faith, ...
— The Christian Foundation, June, 1880
... you think you are speaking the truth, youngster," returned the skeptic mildly. "Somebody's stuffed you, though. Such a thing couldn't be, any way ...
— Walter and the Wireless • Sara Ware Bassett
... according to the mental temperament of the individual by whom it is adopted and applied. "An organ of investigation being introduced, which may be employed for any purpose indifferently, the tendency of such a theory of religious inquiry will just tell according to the spirit in which it acts. A skeptic will develop the principle into Infidelity, a believer into Superstition; but the principle itself remains accurately the same in both."[99] The connection between the theory of Ecclesiastical Development ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... is the attitude of the Suitors toward such a view? Eurymachus is the name of their speaker now, manifestly a representative man of their kind. He derides the prophet: "Go home, old man, and forecast for thy children!" He is a scoffer and skeptic; truly a spokesman of the Suitors in their relation to the Gods, in whom they can have no living faith; through long wickedness they imagine that there is no retribution, they have come to believe their own lie. Impiety, then, is the chief fact of this speech, which ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... 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 ...
— The Greatest English Classic A Study of the King James Version of • Cleland Boyd McAfee
... to trifles and details. He will indicate to a keen observer real intellect or mere intelligence. His emotions also may be read. He reveals himself as generous or selfish; as an optimist or as a skeptic. He shows that he is responsive to heart appeals or is hard hearted, moral or immoral, artistic or lacking in appreciation of ...
— Certain Success • Norval A. Hawkins
... natural eye and velvety to the touch, becomes beneath the microscope suggestive of the hide of a hairless Mexican dog. Religion is a beautiful, an enchanting thing if you do but look at it with the natural eye; but when you employ the adventitious aid of the skeptic's microscope you find flaws enough. It were doubtful if even our boasted American Government, of which you are so proud, could stand such an examination and ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... mean to interfere with your plans. I told you I have left this matter entirely in your hands," answered the skeptic, his aggressiveness suddenly calmed. ...
— Possessed • Cleveland Moffett
... 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 Unit Method had restored ...
— Stammering, Its Cause and Cure • Benjamin Nathaniel Bogue
... 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. ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... already accumulated. If you know that,—for instance, in geometry, if you have read Euclid and Laplace,—your opinion has some value; if you do not know these, you are not entitled to give any opinion on the subject. Whenever any skeptic or bigot claims to be heard on the questions of intellect and morals, we ask if he is familiar with the books of Plato, where all his pert objections have once for all been disposed of. If not, he has no right to our time. Let him go and find ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... gracious," cried Madam Grundy, "we've got a genius among us fit last! I always knew what it would come to!" "Got a fiddlestick!" says Mr. G.; "it's only rockets." And there was no little watching and waiting for the sticks to come down. We are afraid that many a respectable skeptic has a crick in his neck by this time; for we are of opinion that these are a new kind of rocket, that go without sticks, and stay up against all laws ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various
... rich decorations, pomp and splendor repel in broad daylight; candles and lamps sputter futilely; incense nauseates: for the still small voice is stifled, and the kingdom is of this world. But in the twilight, what skeptic, what Puritan resists the call to worship of the Catholic ritual? I had come in time for the intercessory visit to the stations of the cross. Priest and acolytes were following the crucifix from the chancel. Banners waved. Before each station ...
— Riviera Towns • Herbert Adams Gibbons
... 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 I merely leaned back ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... charm of Molly Wingate—Little Molly, as her father always called her to distinguish her from her mother—now soon were to have actual and undeniable verification to the eye of any skeptic who mayhap had doubted mere rumors of a woman's beauty. The three advance figures—the girl, Woodhull, her brother Jed—broke away and raced over the remaining few hundred yards, coming up abreast, laughing in the glee of youth ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough
... the October number, 1863, of the Christian Review, contains one of the most searching examinations of Hume's doctrines extant. It presents a vexed subject in a new and striking light, and offers an unanswerable argument to the sophistries of the great skeptic. The article has been widely circulated and much admired for its logical acumen, and its striking simplification of an apparently complex subject. With the faculty, in a large degree, of presenting abstract truth in a form plain, attractive and intelligible to ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... in a moral point of view; the former a jolly companion, an absolute and settled skeptic, the careless possessor of a danseuse; the latter always agitated despite his outer calm, romantic, passionate, tormented with love and theology. Pierre de Moras, on their return from America, had presented Lucan to his cousin ...
— Led Astray and The Sphinx - Two Novellas In One Volume • Octave Feuillet
... 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 ...
— At the Foot of the Rainbow • Gene Stratton-Porter
... 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 ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... 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 did ...
— The Story of "Mormonism" • James E. Talmage
... 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 must be placed on a more reasonable ...
— The Young Seigneur - Or, Nation-Making • Wilfrid Chateauclair
... "Skeptic or not, I can assure you of one thing—that the queen had no sooner refused it than she earnestly desired to ...
— The Queen's Necklace • Alexandre Dumas pere
... upon the windows and the walls Of every church,—the mother and her child, The miracle and mystery of the birth, The death, the resurrection? Fool and blind! That saw not symbols of eternal truth In that grand tragedy and victory, Significant and infinite as life. What tortures did my skeptic soul endure, At war against herself and all mankind! The restless nights of feverish sleeplessness, With balancing of reasons nicely weighed; The dawn that brought no hope nor energy, The blasphemous ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. I (of II.), Narrative, Lyric, and Dramatic • Emma Lazarus
... cardinal; "that is how you believe in the royal virtues. Ah, skeptic, St. Thomas was credulous, compared ...
— The Queen's Necklace • Alexandre Dumas pere
... criticism is compelled to 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 ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... this ditty of Tradition's days, Which to the dead a lingering fame conveys In song, where fame as yet hath left no sign Beyond the sound whose charm is half divine; Which leaves no record to the skeptic eye, But yields young history all to harmony; A boy Achilles, with the centaur's lyre In hand, to teach him to surpass his sire. For one long-cherish'd ballad's simple stave, Rung from the rock, or mingled with the wave, Or from the bubbling streamlet's grassy ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... swift and dazzling flight as he talked rapidly and brokenly, kissing her cheek, her neck, straining her so close to him that she could hardly breathe. Suddenly it poised above the memory of an old book of Renan's, "The Abbess Juarre," in which the eminent skeptic had somewhat clumsily attempted to demonstrate that if the world unmistakably announced its finish within three days the inhabitants would give themselves up to an ...
— The White Morning • Gertrude Atherton
... world—that vast collective 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 recognition by ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... errors, if any, have been of severity. It is maintained by those who do not love him that he has laughed many a promising youngster into a sour obscurity. And this may be true. A niggard in respect to praise, a skeptic in respect to promise, he is well known. But what he has commended has never failed of a good measure of critical recognition in the end. And he has uncovered ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan
... two took their way out of the tanyard; and even after they had disappeared, their progress through the underbrush was marked by an abnormal commotion among the leaves, as the saltatory skeptic of a dog insisted on more substantial favors ...
— Down the Ravine • Charles Egbert Craddock (real name: Murfree, Mary Noailles)
... that the elements of Roman society with which he was affiliated do not represent either power or public opinion in Italy any more than good society does in most modern states. Roman aristocracy, like all aristocracies, whether of blood or of money, is international in its sympathies, skeptic in its soul. And its influence, in a decisive question of life and death to the nation, is nil. The Prince von Buelow was wasting his time with people who could not decide anything. As Salandra said, with dignified restraint in answer to the vulgar attack upon him made by ...
— The World Decision • Robert Herrick
... 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, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... 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 for us, if we would not encounter ...
— The Shepherd Of My Soul • Rev. Charles J. Callan
... expressions, but give them an eminent individuality as well. Like the Greek sculpture, they are plainly the production of culture, which in restraining wilfulness, however happily inspired, and imposing measure and poise, nevertheless acutely stimulates and develops the faculties themselves. The skeptic who may very plausibly inquire the distinction between that vague entity, "the ideal," and the personal idea of the artist concerned with it, can be shown this distinction better than it can be expressed in words. He will appreciate it very ...
— French Art - Classic and Contemporary Painting and Sculpture • W. C. Brownell
... a superior, perhaps a great work. The writer can look at a human existence with childlike, all-believing, Homeric eyes. That creative vision which of old peopled Olympus still peoples the world for her, beholding gods where the skeptic, critical eye sees only a medical doctor and a sick woman. So is she stamped a true child of the Muse, descended on the one side from Memory, or superficial fact, but on the other from Zeus, the soul of fact; and being gifted to discern the divine halo on the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... faithless, 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 ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... weary lads just snuggled down in the 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
... 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 so much that had clothed it round—pride of life, love of pleasure, ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... 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 ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... conclusions, but base them on sufficient evidence. And then the mood, attitude, and prejudices should be ascertained. This constitutes his standpoint. Most writers have convictions or belong to schools of belief that consciously or unconsciously influence their work. A skeptic like Gibbon could hardly do justice to the ...
— Elementary Guide to Literary Criticism • F. V. N. Painter
... that gave him his reputation, always had the luck to be performed when nobody but Merlin was present; he couldn't start this well with all this crowd around to see; a crowd was as bad for a magician's miracle in that day as it was for a spiritualist's miracle in mine; there was sure to be some skeptic on hand to turn up the gas at the crucial moment and spoil everything. But I did not want Merlin to retire from the job until I was ready to take hold of it effectively myself; and I could not do that until I got my things from Camelot, and that would ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain |
