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The cynic wants to know what is gained for any rational being when a city-full of women undertake to make and receive formal visits with persons whom for the most part they do not wish to see. What is gained, he asks, by leaving cards with all these people and receiving their cards? When a woman makes her tedious rounds, why is she always relieved to find people not in?
He will not, I think, be a sceptic, and still less, of course, a cynic; but he will be, without discredit to his well-known capacity for action, an observer. He will remember that the ways of the Lord are inscrutable, and that this is a world in which everything happens; and eventualities, as the late Emperor of the French used to say, will not find him intellectually unprepared.
They argue that this feeling of satisfaction with yourself which comes from generosity is such a desirable thing in your eyes that you want it for yourself consequently when you show kindness and sympathy for others you are obeying the same motive as the cynic, himself, who having small sympathy for others, prefers the frank gratification of his own ego. This, of course, is pure sophistry.
Perhaps there is nothing more hardening to the tone of young minds than thus to discover how their dearest and strongest wishes become gradually attuned by Time the Cynic to the very note of some selfish policy which in earlier days they despised. The hour of appointment came, and with it a crisis; and with the crisis a collapse. 'God forgive me I can't meet Stephen! she exclaimed to herself.
You may cry Haro upon me for a Cynic or Doggish Philosopher; but I relate my Experiences, and the Things that have stricken my Mind and Sense. I do know Ladies of Quality that hate their Daughters, and would willingly Whip them, did they dare do so, Grown Women as they are, for Spite.
Or did Harry find out that his bride had a devil of a temper of her own, and that for him marriage was a failure? The widow is certainly a very charming young woman, but there may be two sides to this." "You are a cynic, sir," protested the doctor.
I suppose that is the reason your shelves are so well furnished with death's-heads, while you are painting those roguish Loves who are running away with the armour of Mars. I begin to think you are a Cynic philosopher in the pleasant disguise of a cunning painter." "Not I, Messer Greco; a philosopher is the last sort of animal I should choose to resemble.
The squire's head had fallen back, his mouth was slightly open, and the breath came lightly, quiveringly through. The cynic of a moment ago had dropped suddenly into a sleep of more than childish weakness and defencelessness. Robert remained bending forward, gazing at the man who had once meant so much to him. Strange white face, sunk in the great chair!
It would be untrue to say that he was a cynic; he was never a cynic, for that implies a certain corrupt fatigue about human affairs, whereas he was vibrating with virtue and energy. Nor would it be fair to call him even a sceptic, for that implies a dogma of hopelessness and definite belief in unbelief.
"Your conclusions are of much the same sort as those of the intellectual cynic whom we quoted in connection with sympathy and affection. He undertook to prove with a chain of reasoning that I obey only motives of selfishness when I shed tears of grief because my friend has lost his only son."
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