"Skeptical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Peter John and then all that Wagner told him was that the freshman had promised faithfully to do better. But Will had already had so much experience with Peter John's promises that he was somewhat skeptical as to results. His classmate he knew was not essentially vicious, only weak. He was so weak and vain that he was eager to gain the favor of whatever person he chanced to be with, and his promise of better things to Wagner was as readily given as was his response to Mott ...
— Winning His "W" - A Story of Freshman Year at College • Everett Titsworth Tomlinson
... they told how they were led out of darkness into light, and asked for the prayers of all good Christians. The audience felt that human hearts are the same the world over, and that the Holy Ghost had been given unto them, "even as unto us." The address of Low Quong would convince the most skeptical of the power of the gospel to purify the heart, illumine the mind and elevate the life and character of the Chinamen as well as others. He spoke in good English, and by his clear putting of the gospel ...
— American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 4, April, 1889 • Various
... chateau he had become fat, fresh, and rosy, such as he had never before been at any previous epoch of his life. Emboldened by the friendship he had shown to his guest, Voisenon ventured one day to say to the Abbe Boiviel, that, skeptical and atheistical as they falsely imagined him to be in the world, he possessed, nevertheless, an absolute faith in alchemy; he denied neither the philosopher's stone, nor the universal panacea, nor even the potable gold. Now did he, or did he not, believe in potable gold? ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... we both saw the old man," she asserted when they were inclined to be skeptical and scoffed that she had ...
— Rainbow Hill • Josephine Lawrence
... character," admitted the skeptical Thad, as though he begrudged acknowledging even this much; "but I still believe him to be a fake. Keep right on telling ...
— The Chums of Scranton High Out for the Pennant • Donald Ferguson
... a skeptical glance between narrowed lids. "Then, if he can't come himself, I guess he'll send his man. He told that friend of mine he counted on having ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson
... Malcolm Murchison by which he was to drive us round by the long road that day, nor do I know exactly what motive influenced the old man's exertions in the matter. He was fond of Mabel, but I was old enough, and knew Julius well enough, to be skeptical of his motives. It is certain that a most excellent understanding existed between him and Murchison after the reconciliation, and that when the young people set up housekeeping over at the old Murchison ...
— The Conjure Woman • Charles W. Chesnutt
... Stanton could see the importance of such work at this time, believing that if women put all their efforts into winning the war, they would, without question, be rewarded with full citizenship. Susan was skeptical about this and disappointed that even the best women were so willing to be swept aside by the ...
— Susan B. Anthony - Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian • Alma Lutz
... the blur ahead of them detached itself from the surrounding darkness, until even skeptical Tom and Billy knew that what they saw was a body of men bearing down ...
— Army Boys in the French Trenches • Homer Randall
... realized and understood. She had the faith of a little child. And on the hills and through the intervales over which they journeyed, in the glare of the eager sun or beneath the wattled boughs, the emanations of the Divine filled her with transports so contagious that they affected even Thomas, who was skeptical by birth; and when, after the descent from Hermon, two or three of the disciples mused together over the spectacle which they had seen, the rhyme of her lips parted ineffably. She too had seen him aureoled with the sun, dazzling as the snow-fields on the heights. To her it was ...
— Mary Magdalen • Edgar Saltus
... face with the two men with whom every critic of American novelists has to reckon; who represent what is carefullest and newest in American fiction; and it remains to inquire how far their work has been moulded by the skeptical or radical spirit of which Turguenieff is the ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... position is opposed to all the recent work of the scientific bureaus of the Government and to the general experience of mankind. A physician who disbelieved in vaccination would not be the right man to handle an epidemic of smallpox, nor should we leave a doctor skeptical about the transmission of yellow fever by the Stegomyia mosquito in charge of sanitation at Havana or Panama. So with the improvement of our rivers; it is no longer wise or safe to leave this great work in the hands of ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... the reason for its necessity. The Reflective stage busies itself with the relation of dogmas to each other, and with the search for the grounds on which their necessity must rest. It is essentially critical, and hence skeptical. The explanation of the dogmas, which is carried on in this process of reasoning and skeptical investigation, is completed alone in speculative thinking, which recognizes the free unity of the content and its form as its own proper ...
— Pedagogics as a System • Karl Rosenkranz
... like to give their own impressions of a journey, though every inch of the way may have been described a half a dozen times before, I add some of the notes made by the way, hoping that they will amuse the reader, and convince the skeptical that such a being as Nurse Periwinkle does exist, that she really did go to Washington, and that these Sketches ...
— Hospital Sketches • Louisa May Alcott
... marked the flight of time by phrases taken from the sermons of these eminent divines, and repeated in precisely the voice and accents of the original delivery. In startling proximity to the religious department I was shown the skeptical clocks. So near were they, indeed, that when, as I stood there, the various time-pieces announced the hour of ten, the war of opinions that followed was calculated to unsettle the firmest convictions. The observations of an Ingersoll which stood ...
— With The Eyes Shut - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... ball that had carried away the testicle of his young friend, that had penetrated the ovary of the young lady, and, with some spermatozoa upon it, had impregnated her. With this conviction he approached the young man and told him the circumstances; the soldier appeared skeptical at first, but consented to visit the young mother; a friendship ensued which soon ripened into a happy marriage, and the pair had three children, none resembling, in the same degree as the ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... to be skeptical, as I have considerable acquaintance there. In the army there's that fire-eating conqueror of ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... had regarded the whole scene with interest and awe. The whole scene preached to his inmost soul. Doctrinal arguments and learned polemics, he could have tilted with, word for word; but here were facts, and realities and influences, which disarmed and defied all that was skeptical in his nature. The dying man—the priest of God—that young and fragile girl, illustrated by their acts a faith which, though mysterious to him, could be nothing less than divine; but Father Fabian, ignorant of the thoughts which were passing, like ripples ...
— May Brooke • Anna H. Dorsey
... edible legs. The first mention of frogs in profane literature is in Homer's narrative of the war between them and the mice. Skeptical persons have doubted Homer's authorship of the work, but the learned, ingenious and industrious Dr. Schliemann has set the question forever at rest by uncovering the bones of the slain frogs. One of the forms of moral suasion by which Pharaoh was besought to favor the Israelities was ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... My father was exceedingly skeptical concerning the desirability of amateur photography, and flatly refused to furnish the necessary funds. It was October then, so I conceived a plan by which I would earn money during the fall by corn-husking among the near-by farmers, so that when spring opened I would have the ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls - Volume XIII, No. 51: November 12, 1892 • Various
... trouble and recoil, while the others and the general front continue to advance. Theory does not profess to be certainty. It is only tentative, and subject necessarily to frequent errors, for the elimination of which the severely skeptical spirit of the laws to which it is now held furnishes the best appliance. Modern science possesses an internal vis medicatrix which prevents its suffering seriously from excesses or irregularities. When it ventures to touch the shield of the Unknowable, it is only with the butt ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... The Secretary looked skeptical. "Your discoveries were remarkably ... apt. And it does seem clear that they made the appearance of hunting you, while going to some pains not to catch you. Mr. Coburn, how can we make ...
— The Invaders • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... decade, however, the country has suffered recurring economic problems of inflation, external debt, capital flight, and budget deficits. Growth in 2000 was a negative 0.8%, as both domestic and foreign investors remained skeptical of the government's ability to pay debts and maintain the peso's fixed exchange rate with the US dollar. The economic situation worsened in 2001 with the widening of spreads on Argentine bonds, massive withdrawals from the banks, ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... spread over the depressing mustard yellow paint of the woodwork with its obviously false graining and deepened the blackness of the fireplace. Throughout the reading of the Scripture Edward Dunsack never shifted his slumped position; his face, with smudged closed eyes, seemed fixed in a skeptical smile. The hollows of his temples were green. The reading ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer
... say, that it seems to me that the supernatural, in order to call forth those sensations, terrible to our ancestors and terrible but delicious to ourselves, skeptical posterity, must necessarily, and with but a few exceptions, remain enwrapped in mystery. Indeed, 'tis the mystery that touches us, the vague shroud of moonbeams that hangs about the haunting lady, the glint on the warrior's breastplate, the click of his unseen spurs, while the figure ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... disbelieving type, every attempt failed, until at last the spirits signified by knocks that he was a disturbing agency, and that while he remained all our efforts would fail. Upon this some of the company proposed that he should leave; of which invitation he took advantage, with a skeptical sneer ...
— The Autobiography of a Quack And The Case Of George Dedlow • S. Weir Mitchell
... infidel, and had written an attack on the Christian evidence, which was sufficiently clever to run through three editions, when the perusal of Dr. Doddridge's "Christianity Founded on Argument" revolutionized all his opinions. He not only retracted his skeptical publication, but became an ornament to the faith which once he destroyed. To the liberal mind of Doddridge it was no mortification, at least he never showed it, that his son in the faith preferred the Church of ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... She was similarly skeptical of every kind of authority, and had no confidence whatever in the ability of the three university faculties. For example, since patriarchal conditions were her ideal, she questioned whether mankind derived ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... Civil Cabinet), who was somewhat skeptical at first regarding the need of such a fund, is now glowing with enthusiasm about it, and he tells me the whole Commission, which is composed of carefully chosen men, is earnestly devoted to the work of making ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie • Andrew Carnegie
... the skeptical Sage put into the mouths of all the corrupt men of the future. Perhaps, as may easily be the case, old Tasio was mistaken, but we ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... judgment, and the anti-Christian conclusions to which they lead, pass on from men of science to literary men; and literature is vitiated, and books and periodicals which should lead men to truth, cause them to err. Thus skeptical principles pervade society. They find advocates at times even among men who call themselves ministers of Christ. The consequence is, that well-disposed, and even pious young men, are perplexed, bewildered, and some who, like John the Baptist, were "burning ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... children so young that they soon forget their parents and their native language also. It was long before I could give credit to the tales of bloodshed told by native witnesses, and had I received no other testimony but theirs I should probably have continued skeptical to this day as to the truth of the accounts; but when I found the Boers themselves, some bewailing and denouncing, others glorying in the bloody scenes in which they had been themselves the actors, I was compelled to admit the validity of the testimony, ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... If you are skeptical, let me beseech you to join the children in a Free Kindergarten, and play with them. You will be convinced, not through your head, perhaps, but through your heart. I remember converting such a grim female once! You ...
— Children's Rights and Others • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... isle as a flaming, fragrant garden, overrun with flowers, a sort of unspoiled island Eden, where bronze-brown Eves with faces and figures of surpassing loveliness disported themselves on the long white beaches, or loitered the lazy days away beneath the palms. But I went there skeptical at heart, for, ever since I journeyed six thousand miles to see the women for whom Circassia has long been undeservedly famous, I have listened with doubt and distrust to the tales told by returned travelers of the nymphs ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... and it works whether he believes it or not. Just so the skillful operator in Cosmic Therapeutics can generate, control and direct the power of the Cosmic consciousness which he understands, and it brings its results whether the skeptical mind of man accepts ...
— Freedom Talks No. II • Julia Seton, M.D.
... interests me highly, and I thank you most sincerely for it. I am obliged to reply, however, that the affidavit of Messrs Miller and McKinlay astonished me very much. I cannot remember to have ever read anything of the kind anywhere and like you, I am very skeptical about it. I was in the world and a student at Amherst College in the year 1867, and was even then collecting the material for my history. I am pretty sure that I should have known of anything of this kind had it existed. I am going to try to run this assertion down, as I am here among the ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... skeptical, then pained. It was during the days, I think, of my "probation," and into his anxious heart had come the thought, Was I "running well"? But he dismissed the doubt and promised to walk ...
— Roof and Meadow • Dallas Lore Sharp
... it. I've tried everything on the face of the earth to find an interest—but one—and Florence Baker represents that one. I hope against hope that I'll find what I'm searching for there, but I am skeptical. I have been disappointed too many times to expect happiness now. This is my last trump, old man, and I'm playing it deliberately and carefully. If it fails, Florence will probably return; but before God, I never will! I have thought ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... it, twisting his arm in every possible direction as if skeptical of any help from such a source, but gradually letting a look of pleased surprise spread across his face. The crowd watched in amusement, and nearly everybody laughed when the patient finally announced in a loud voice that he was cured, that it was nothing short ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston
... with a horse? Was Sully's child, that showed its doll a series of engravings to choose from, completely deceived? It seems that we must rather admit an intermittence, an alteration between affirmation and negation. On the one hand, the skeptical attitude of those who laugh at it displeases the child, who is like a devout believer whose faith is being broken down. On the other hand, doubt must indeed arise in him from time to time, for without this, rectification could never occur—one belief opposes the other or drives it ...
— Essay on the Creative Imagination • Th. Ribot
... its spirit all minds can grasp, its moral laws all people can obey, its truths appeal not only to the lowly and simple, but also to the highest intellect, they win the spontaneous approval, not only of the pious, but also of the most skeptical. At a literary gathering at the house of the Baron von Holbach, where the most celebrated atheists of the age used to assemble, the gentlemen present were one day commenting on the absurd and foolish things with which the ...
— The Jericho Road • W. Bion Adkins
... does not eventually become skeptical of the whole human race, it is because his experience has shown him that honor and vice may walk side by side without contamination; that virtue and crime may be closely connected, and yet no stain ...
— Bucholz and the Detectives • Allan Pinkerton
... his stereotyped answer to all announcements of new discoveries. Even in regard to the magnetic telegraph he is still quite skeptical, and shrugs his shoulders, and elevates his eyebrows, as much as to say, "It'll blow up one of these times, mark my word for it." Nobody has yet been able to persuade him to go to the Exchange and ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 2 August 1848 • Various
... all my excitement," said Fitzgerald, "I am somewhat skeptical. Still, your suggestion, Mr. Breitmann, ...
— A Splendid Hazard • Harold MacGrath
... had any hallucinations, mental delusions, nor hysterics, and am not at all superstitious. Spiritualistic manifestations, hypnotic dabblings, and the other psychical fads of the day have little or no attraction for me. In fact, I have always been skeptical of them, and they ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... emerging from the gate of the Marvin mansion to the avenue, and as Harry turned to Pauline with a skeptical reply on his lips, the approach of a young man of military ...
— The Perils of Pauline • Charles Goddard
... Bank's ratio of reserve from the low figure of 40% to the paralyzing figure of 14-5/8%; together with the fact that the surplus reserves of our New York Clearing House banks fell $50,000,000 below their legal requirements, were reasons enough in themselves to convince the most skeptical of the necessity of ...
— The New York Stock Exchange in the Crisis of 1914 • Henry George Stebbins Noble
... Washington. She returned with her husband to Europe and several months later her family received the announcement of her death. As they had only recently received a letter from her, when apparently she was in the best of health and spirits, they felt somewhat skeptical and wrote at once for more definite information. A few weeks later a package reached them containing her heart preserved in alcohol. Mrs. McPherson's older daughter, Mrs. Worthington Ross, lived ...
— As I Remember - Recollections of American Society during the Nineteenth Century • Marian Gouverneur
... bit skeptical—still basing my opinion on your own statements as to common-stock dividends—as to the price per kilowatt after competitors shall have been sandbagged according to that legislative measure," drawled the mayor. He turned to the Senator. "You see, sir, your guest and ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... written of its birds and beasts, a stranger would naturally expect to come upon them at every turn, instead of which it is a well-known fact that one hundred miles of the wildest country may be traversed without seeing a single head of game, and the uninitiated might become skeptical ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... does," quoted Marilla. "I've had that said to me before, but I have my doubts about it," remarked skeptical Anne, sniffing at her narcissi. "Oh, aren't these flowers sweet! It was lovely of Mrs. Lynde to give them to me. I have no hard feelings against Mrs. Lynde now. It gives you a lovely, comfortable feeling to apologize and be forgiven, doesn't it? Aren't the stars bright tonight? If you could ...
— Anne Of Green Gables • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... I'm coming to that," said Miss Daggett firmly. "As I was telling you, this work is a complete library in itself. A careful perusal of the specimen pages will convince the most skeptical. Turning to page four hundred ...
— An Alabaster Box • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and Florence Morse Kingsley
... first, that he would be offhandedly skeptical at the message which I was sending him over the wire, the message that my boy had run away. He might even be flippantly indifferent, and remind me that much worse ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... murmurs of assent from Jenks, George and Macgreggor. Jenks and the boy were very sanguine; Macgreggor was rather skeptical as to future success, but he sternly resolved to banish all ...
— Chasing an Iron Horse - Or, A Boy's Adventures in the Civil War • Edward Robins
... take a more skeptical turn. A certain Mr. Edwardes—a most amusing man—used to describe a call which he paid one Sunday afternoon to a farmer near Buckfastleigh, whom he found reading his Bible. Mr. Edwardes congratulated him on the appropriate nature ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock
... would ruin this country as rapidly as it has been made? Who are enamored of a puerile imitation of foreign splendors? Who strenuously endeavor to graft the questionable points of Parisian society upon our own? Who pass a few years in Europe and return skeptical of republicanism and human improvement, longing and sighing for more sharply emphasized social distinctions? Who squander, with profuse recklessness, the hard-earned fortunes of their sires? Who diligently devote their time to nothing, foolishly and wrongly supposing that a young ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume II. (of X.) • Various
... the beginning of the Reformation began their activity in Italy, Spain, Switzerland, and Germany. Most of these "modern Arians and Antitrinitarians," as they are called in the Twelfth Article of the Formula of Concord came from the skeptical circles of Humanists in Italy. Concerning these rationalists and Epicureans the Apology remarks: "Many [in Italy and elsewhere] even publicly ridicule all religions, or, if they approve anything, they approve such things only as are in ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... Zionists. The withdrawal of the Zionists from American Jewish work—and such withdrawal may become a moral duty for the Zionists who are loyal to the movement and respect their convictions—might mean a complete standstill in the life of American Jewry. Perhaps there are a few among us who are skeptical about the fate of American Judaism, and who therefore see no harm in hastening its disintegration. But those of us who are profoundly concerned about the future of the two and one-half million Jews who are now in America, and of twice ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... established fact. On the 20th of July, the Legislature of the State placed him formally in nomination. Meanwhile Lewis had gone to North Carolina to work up sentiment there, and by the close of the year assurances of support were coming in satisfactorily. From being skeptical or at best indifferent, Jackson himself had come to share the enthusiasm of ...
— The Reign of Andrew Jackson • Frederic Austin Ogg
... friend returned to California, and in one of its beautiful valley-towns he entered a law-office, with a view to prepare himself for the legal profession. Here he was thrown into daily association with a little knot of skeptical lawyers. As is often the case, their moral obliquities ran parallel with their errors in opinion. They swore, gambled genteelly, and drank. It is not strange that in this icy atmosphere the growth of any ...
— California Sketches, Second Series • O. P. Fitzgerald
... m. step of a stair. escapar vr. to escape. escape m. escape, flight; a todo —— at full speed. escarabajo beetle. escarbar to scratch. escarlata scarlet. escaso scanty, defective, slight. escena scene. esceptico skeptical. esclavo, -a slave. escoba broom. Escocia Scotland. escombro ruins, rubbish. esconder to hide. escopeta gun. escorbuto scurvy. escorpion m. scorpion. escribano notary. escribir to write. escrito writing. escritor writer. ...
— Novelas Cortas • Pedro Antonio de Alarcon
... face of her investigator. His expression showed skeptical amusement. She knew that her passion for talking too much was her greatest professional flaw; though had she thought it over maturely, she would have realized that she had never got into trouble ...
— The House of Mystery • William Henry Irwin
... dangerous mission, Tom and Jack had carefully studied it from all angles. At first Jack had been frankly skeptical, and he said as much ...
— Air Service Boys in the Big Battle • Charles Amory Beach
... visionary schemes of interpretation, in which the writer's fancy is substituted for the sober rules of criticism, and the word of God accommodated to his preconceived opinions. The rejection, open or covert, of the divine side, manifests itself in a cold, skeptical criticism, which denies or explains away all that is supernatural in the Bible; which, instead of seeking to discover and unfold that unity of plan and harmony of parts which belong to every work of God, delights rather in exaggerating the supposed inconsistencies ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... down in the books, such as "use a sharp knife," and "cut at a joint," we use scissors mostly in lieu of a knife, and we never look for a joint, unless it happens to come in the way. We are equally skeptical as to the merits of favorite kinds and colors of sands or other compounds used for the purpose. Of this we have reason to be thankful, for a nicety of knowledge in this particular in the head of a scientific (?) propagator may sometimes ...
— Woodward's Graperies and Horticultural Buildings • George E. Woodward
... only an emphasis of the purpose to devote a certain period to the higher life, and if they cannot be defended, then we may begin to be skeptical about the seriousness of the intention of a higher education. If the school is merely a method of passing the time until a certain event in the girl's life, she had better dress as if that event were the only ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... kin do it!" ejaculated Squire Heath, who had watched the melting of his skeptical opinions in ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... few of the darker and more cynical utterances, this clear-sighted teacher goes on: "Their cry is indeed full of doubt and despair and perplexity; it is such as we often hear from the melancholy, skeptical, inquiring spirits of our own age; such as we often refuse to hear and regard as unworthy even a good man's thought or care, but the admission of such a cry into the Book of Ecclesiastes shows that it is ...
— Who Wrote the Bible? • Washington Gladden
... of the nature of the undertaking, he was skeptical. He had no more than a slight acquaintance with the Colonel then, and only a vague, hearsay knowledge of what the American Cowboy could do. Evidently his mind was divided by the dictates of common sense ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... narrow opening, the boys decapitated them and laid them in a row on the grass. They had caught nine, and nine times thirty-five—well, it would be more than three krones. The stupendous amount made Pelle skeptical. ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... with Nahua traditions. I may as well state here as elsewhere that notwithstanding the statement made by Gemelli and others that it was the belief or tradition of the Mexicans that the sun first appeared in the south, I am somewhat skeptical on this point. ...
— Notes on Certain Maya and Mexican Manuscripts • Cyrus Thomas
... straight brown hair had been coaxed by dint of two rows of curl papers to hang in shining brown curls. A silver paper star shone above her forehead and slippers covered with more silver paper made her feet things of beauty even in Katy's skeptical eyes. ...
— Chicken Little Jane • Lily Munsell Ritchie
... her life came at the age of twenty-two, when the household removed to Coventry, and Miss Evans was there brought in contact with the family of a wealthy ribbon-maker named Bray. He was a man of some culture, and the atmosphere of his house, with its numerous guests, was decidedly skeptical. To Miss Evans, brought up in a home ruled by early Methodist ideals of piety, the change was a little startling. Soon she was listening to glib evolutionary theories that settled everything from an earthworm to a cosmos; next she was eagerly reading such unbaked works as Bray's ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... the roll with a smile. He opened it hastily, in a most skeptical humor. Walter Tyrrel leant over him, and tried just at first to put in a word or two of explanation, such as Le Neve had made to himself; but an occasionally testy "Yes, yes; I see," was all the thanks he got for his pains and trouble. After a minute or two he found out it was better to let ...
— Michael's Crag • Grant Allen
... for Coltman had promised a kind of shooting such as I had never seen before. The stories he told of wild rides in the car after strings of antelope which traveled at fifty or sixty miles an hour had left me mildly skeptical. But then, you know, I had never seen ...
— Across Mongolian Plains - A Naturalist's Account of China's 'Great Northwest' • Roy Chapman Andrews
... years ago gave me permanent relief and cure. While I was always skeptical as to a permanent cure of rupture by means of a truss the fact remains that after following your advice and instruction, I have been going about without a truss, doing all kinds of work same as I did prior to becoming ...
— Cluthe's Advice to the Ruptured • Chas. Cluthe & Sons
... credulous of "secret" news from Moscow, and skeptical of every one's opinion but their own, were bolsheviking Marxian Utopia beneath a screen of such arrogant innocence that even the streetcorner police constables suspected them. And Mustapha Kemal, in Anatolia, was rumoured to be preparing ...
— Jimgrim and Allah's Peace • Talbot Mundy
... maybe not, fellows!" called out the ever-skeptical Jack Eastwick, as he watched the rapidly nearing figures. Jack was on the regular team, ...
— The Boys of Columbia High on the Gridiron • Graham B. Forbes
... Dad. But I'm going to try!" and Tom, after a further talk with his father, began work in earnest on the big problem. That it was a big one Tom was not disposed to deny, and that it would be a valuable invention even his somewhat skeptical father admitted. ...
— Tom Swift and his Air Scout - or, Uncle Sam's Mastery of the Sky • Victor Appleton
... the authenticity of these bells as aboriginal works very naturally arises, and it may be difficult to show to the satisfaction of the skeptical mind that any particular specimen is not of European origin or inspiration. At the same time we are not without strong evidences that such bells were in use by the Americans before the advent of the whites. Historical accounts ...
— Ancient art of the province of Chiriqui, Colombia • William Henry Holmes
... his Indians alone." Her lips trembled and tightened. "I am a woman, and I'll show him what a woman can do. He has lived among the Indians until he thinks he owns them. He is hard, and domineering, and uncompromising, and skeptical. And yet—" What gave her pause was so intangible, so chaotic, in her own mind as to form itself into no ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... skeptical until now. I had had the usual tolerant attitude of the man who is summoned from his bed to search for burglars, combined with the artificial courage of firearms. With the discovery of my empty gun, ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... came, college was in a most ungodly state. The college church was almost extinct. Most of the students were skeptical, and rowdies were plenty. Wine and liquors were kept in many rooms; intemperance, profanity, gambling, and licentiousness were common. I hardly know how I escaped.... That was the day of the infidelity of the Tom Paine school. Boys that dressed flax in the barn, as I ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... description was bound to reassure the most skeptical mind, and M. Segmuller breathed again: "Now that I am easy on that score," said he, "I should like some information about another prisoner—a fellow named Chupin, who isn't in the secret cells. I want to know if any visitor ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau
... skeptical, accustomed to the best society (he had held a much-envied shore appointment at the Ministry of Marine for a year preceding his retreat from his profession and from Europe), he possessed a latent warmth of feeling and a capacity for sympathy which were concealed by ...
— End of the Tether • Joseph Conrad
... not going to be hard on her. To some women a bitterer thing than not to be loved is not to be allowed to love. And when two women insist on loving the same man, the despised one is naturally skeptical as to the strength and purity and eternity of the other's feelings. "She never loved him!" is the heart's consolation to the lucid brain reiterating "He never loved me!" I did not say that Miss ...
— The Tysons - (Mr. and Mrs. Nevill Tyson) • May Sinclair
... criteria. Though it was accepted as Vergilian by Renaissance readers simply because the manuscripts of the poem and ancient writers, from Lucan and Statius to Martial and Suetonius, all attribute the work to him, recent critics have usually been skeptical or downright recusant. Some insist that it is a forgery or supposititious work; others that it is a liberally padded re-working of Vergil's original. Only a few have accepted it as a very youthful failure of Vergil's, or as an attempt of the poet to parody ...
— Vergil - A Biography • Tenney Frank
... member of the Cenacle, which held its sessions at D'Arthez's home on rue des Quatre-Vents, during the Restoration. He disparaged Leon Giraud's beliefs, went under a Rabelaisian guise, careless, lazy and skeptical, also inclined to be melancholy and happy at the same time; nick-named by his friends the "Regimental Dog." Fulgence Ridal and Joseph Bridau, with other members of the Cenacle, were present at an evening party given by Madame Veuve Bridau, in 1819, to ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... the I.W.W. It was plausible to charge these associations with being under the guidance of foreigners, with "pacificism" and a general tendency to disloyalty. But suspicion went further so as to embrace members of a rather small, thoughtful class who, while rarely socialistic, were confessedly skeptical in regard to the general beneficence of existing institutions, and who failed to applaud at just the right points to suit the taste of the majority of their fellow-citizens. So the general impression grew up that there was a sort of widespread ...
— The Mind in the Making - The Relation of Intelligence to Social Reform • James Harvey Robinson
... tried for helping men to cross into Holland, but, so far as we know, the death sentence had never been inflicted. The usual thing was to give a sentence of imprisonment in Germany. The officials at the Political Department professed to be skeptical as to the reported intention of the court to inflict the death sentence, and led us to think that nothing of ...
— A Journal From Our Legation in Belgium • Hugh Gibson
... dark when a motley throng of uncles, aunties, visiting lady, neighbors and children went climbing the cavernous, echoing stairway of the dark school building behind the toiling figure of the skeptical Uncle Michael, lantern ...
— The Speaker, No. 5: Volume II, Issue 1 - December, 1906. • Various
... keep his mind fixed on that particular issue. He starts to discuss it, and does so with a clearness and fairness that have not been equaled since the days of Lessing—and then he drifts off in a new direction. The mutual opposition between Jews and Catholics becomes an opposition between the skeptical and the mystical temperaments. It is as if he wanted to say that all differences are unreal except those between individuals as such. And if that be his intention, he is right, I believe, and his play is the greater for bringing that thought ...
— The Lonely Way—Intermezzo—Countess Mizzie - Three Plays • Arthur Schnitzler
... plane was there, too, and the radio man. Their stories were told in a disconcerting silence, broken only by some officer's abrupt and skeptical question on one point ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various
... fixture in his body-belt, and he was obliged to withdraw the glittering blade by itself, and to hand it to her in all its naked terrors. The young girl received the weapons with a smiling complacency. Upon such altars as these the skeptical reader will remember that Mars had once hung his "battered shield," his lance, and ...
— Susy, A Story of the Plains • Bret Harte
... in the gullies. Camp goods, provisions, and bedding streamed by on trains of mules, and by nightfall a city was in its initial stages—tent stores, open-air saloons, eating-booths, and canvas hotels. A few of the swarming incomers were skeptical of the find, but the larger number were hilariously boastful of their locations, and around their evening camp-fires groups gathered to exult ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... (Cries of "Order, order!") If there was any doubt before, the honorable member continued, as to the influence which was at work in that Gadarene herd, which assumed the functions of Her Majesty's government, the sounds that now came from the Treasury Benches would convince even the most skeptical that sacred history is sometimes repeated by profane, but he could not compliment the devils, who had the bad taste to—(Several honorable members here rose amid the cheers of the Irish Members, and a scene of confusion ...
— Phyllis of Philistia • Frank Frankfort Moore
... thought otherwise, being of a skeptical turn on very many points, but his doubts did not break forth in active denial, and he was rather disaffected than rebellious, At one period, this gentleman had taken a part in active life at home, and possibly might have been eager to share its rewards; but in latter days he did not seem ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... Krech, "was that of a polite but skeptical child listening to a bedtime story. I soon convinced him of its importance, though. He says ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... idea which the invalid had never heard expressed before; but still somewhat skeptical, she asked, "Do you feel that way about ...
— The Lilac Lady • Ruth Alberta Brown
... of working or reading, he rolled a comfortable chair up to the fire, put on a fresh log or two, opened a new box of Bock's, and lighting one, settled back in the chair. How many hours he sat and how many cigars he smoked are not recorded, lest the statement should make people skeptical of the narrative. ...
— The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him • Paul Leicester Ford
... but Mr. Newt was skeptical. He had an instinctive suspicion that no rich young man, however much a booby, would have married Fanny clandestinely. Men are forced to know something of their reputations, and Boniface Newt was perfectly aware that it was generally understood he had no aversion to ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... these vessels in the ordinary packet service—we cannot pretend to form an opinion; but of the entire feasibility of the passage of the Atlantic by steam, as far as regards safety, comfort, and dispatch, even in the roughest and most boisterous weather, the most skeptical must now cease ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... roots, and has shown that in Kant's thinking, which has hitherto been conceived as too simple and transparent, but which, in fact, is extremely complicated and struggling in the dark, a number of entirely heterogeneous principles of thought (skeptical, subjectivistic, metaphysico-work, rationalistic, a priori, and practical motives) are at which, conflicting with and crippling one another, make the attainment of harmonious results impossible. Benno Erdmann (p. 330) and Hans Vaihinger (pp. 323 note, 331) have given Kant's principal ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... Association." The reporter's gaze was frankly skeptical, but Farr met it without a flicker ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... recalled to me the London shop where I had bought them, the difficulty the man had in fitting me, and other details of the uninteresting but practical operation. At once, in its train, followed a wholesome view of the modern skeptical world I was accustomed to move in at home. I thought of roast beef, and ale, motor-cars, policemen, brass bands, and a dozen other things that proclaimed the soul of ordinariness or utility. The effect was immediate and astonishing ...
— The Willows • Algernon Blackwood
... would say—"When young Digby and I were boys together," and then add with a sigh, "but we shall never meet again in this world. His family interest secured him a valuable appointment in a distant part of the British dominions." Mrs Pompley was always rather cowed by the Digbies. She could not be skeptical as to this connection, for the Colonel's mother was certainly a Digby, and the Colonel impaled the Digby arms. En revanche, as the French say, for these marital connections, Mrs. Pompley had her own favorite affinity, which ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... an imposing document covered with slanting lines of curving Arabic letters in gold. Peter was impressed but still skeptical. ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... all parts of the old and new world, and their relations, true or false, were in those days, when people were addicted to the marvellous, universally credited. In the succeeding ages, when a more skeptical and scrutinizing spirit prevailed, several of these asserted facts were found upon examination to be false; and men, from a bias inherent in our nature, ran into the opposite extreme. It then became established as a philosophical ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... skeptical. "Why should I? I've decided that life is pretty sweet, after all! Why haven't Jen and his gang broken in here? Why is he waiting? Have you told him ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... which are capable of effective application. We believe, so far as the mass of children are concerned, that if we keep at them long enough we can teach reading and writing and figuring. We are practically, even if unconsciously, skeptical as to the possibility of anything like the same assurance in morals. We believe in moral laws and rules, to be sure, but they are in the air. They are something set off by themselves. They are so very "moral" that they have no working contact ...
— Moral Principles in Education • John Dewey
... gather all the details, they had learned enough to know that the German Crown Prince had laid careful plans for an attack on Verdun. They had taken their information to the French commanding officer in Marseilles. The latter had been somewhat skeptical, but Colonel Derevaux, an old friend of the boys, had arrived at the psychological moment and vouched ...
— The Boy Allies At Verdun • Clair W. Hayes
... overthrow of Napoleon, whom naturally he considered the great disturber of the nations. At every period, however, he exclaimed: 'It is too good to be true, it cannot be true.' He was altogether skeptical ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse
... unsophisticated. Yet the utmost cunning of the wily savage—all the strategy of Indian warfare—was not sufficient to deceive or overreach him! Though one might have expected that his life of ceaseless watchfulness would make him skeptical and suspicious, his confidence was given heartily, without reservation, and often most imprudently. If he gave his trust at all, you might ply him, by the hour, with the most improbable and outrageous fictions, without fear of ...
— Western Characters - or Types of Border Life in the Western States • J. L. McConnel
... a very great mistake to suppose that when reaction follows collapse, in cases in which alcohol has been given, this result is always due to the alcohol. I have seen so many cases of severe collapse recover without alcohol that I cannot but be skeptical as to its necessity, and even as to its value. I was much struck many years ago by a case of post partum hemorrhage which was so severe that convulsions set in. I should then have given brandy if there had been any to give, ...
— Alcohol: A Dangerous and Unnecessary Medicine, How and Why - What Medical Writers Say • Martha M. Allen
... if all we had to dread were the revolution which is held up as a specter to terrify us! Since I cannot imagine a society more detestable than ours, I feel more skeptical than alarmed in regard to that which will replace it. If I should have to suffer from the change, I should be consoled by thinking that the executioners of that day were the victims of the previous time, and the hope of something better ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy |
