Isaac Taylor
Philosopher and author, 1787-1865
Cited as I. Taylor. — 178 quotations
Abandon
Hope was overthrown, yet could not be abandoned.
Aberration
Whims, which at first are the aberrations of a single brain, pass with heat into epidemic form.
Abject
Shall these abjects, these victims, these outcasts, know any thing of pleasure?
Abjunctive
It is this power which leads on from the accidental and abjunctive to the universal.
Acceleration
A period of social improvement, or of intellectual advancement, contains within itself a principle of acceleration.
Achieve
Supposing faculties and powers to be the same, far more may be achieved in any line by the aid of a capital, invigorating motive than without it.
Acme
The moment when a certain power reaches the acme of its supremacy.
Acquit
A responsibility that can never be absolutely acquitted.
Adducible
Proofs innumerable, and in every imaginable manner diversified, are adducible.
Adduction
An adduction of facts gathered from various quarters.
Affiliate
Is the soul affiliated to God, or is it estranged and in rebellion?
Alienate
The recollection of his former life is a dream that only the more alienates him from the realities of the present.
Aloof
To make the Bible as from the hand of God, and then to look at it aloof and with caution, is the worst of all impieties.
Ambiguity
No shadow of ambiguity can rest upon the course to be pursued.
Amenable
Nor is man too diminutive . . . to be amenable to the divine government.
Analogue
The vexatious tyranny of the individual despot meets its analogue in the insolent tyranny of the many.
Anastomose
The ribbing of the leaf, and the anastomosing network of its vessels.
Anear
The measure of misery anear us.
Antipathy
A habit is generated of thinking that a natural antipathy exists between hope and reason.
Apace
A visible triumph of the gospel draw on apace.
Append
A further purpose appended to the primary one.
Applicate
Those applicate sciences which extend the power of man over the elements.
Approximation
The largest capacity and the most noble dispositions are but an approximation to the proper standard and true symmetry of human nature.
Arraign
It is not arrogance, but timidity, of which the Christian body should now be arraigned by the world.
Assessor
With his ignorance, his inclinations, and his fancy, as his assessors in judgment.
Astral
Shines only with an astral luster.
Attachment
The human mind . . . has exhausted its forces in the endeavor to rend the supernatural from its attachment to this history.
Attenuate
To undersell our rivals . . . has led the manufacturer to . . . attenuate his processes, in the allotment of tasks, to an extreme point.
Averment
Signally has this averment received illustration in the course of recent events.
Avuncular
In these rare instances, the law of pedigree, whether direct or avuncular, gives way.
Axiomatic
The stores of axiomatic wisdom.
Bestowment
They almost refuse to give due praise and credit to God's own bestowments.
Bluff
There is indeed a bluff pertinacity which is a proper defense in a moment of surprise.
Brunt
It is instantly and irrecoverably scattered by our first brunt with some real affair of common life.
Brutish
Man may . . . render himself brutish, but it is in vain that he would seek to take the rank and density of the brute.
Capital
Whatever is capital and essential in Christianity.
Caricature
The truest likeness of the prince of French literature will be the one that has most of the look of a caricature.
Categorical
The scriptures by a multitude of categorical and intelligible decisions . . . distinguish between the things seen and temporal and those that are unseen and eternal.
Certify
The industry of science at once certifies and greatly extends our knowledge of the vastness of the creation.
Christianize
Christianized philosophers.
Climax
We must look higher for the climax of earthly good.
Cloth
The cloth, the clergy, are constituted for administering and for giving the best possible effect to . . . every axiom.
Commination
Those thunders of commination.
Confirmatory
A fact confirmatory of the conclusion.
Congenial
To defame the excellence with which it has no sympathy . . . is its congenial work.
Connection
Any sort of connection which is perceived or imagined between two or more things.
Corroborate
The concurrence of all corroborates the same truth.
Coruscation
He might have illuminated his times with the incessant corcations of his genius.
Couch
The half-hidden, hallf-revealed wonders, that yet couch beneath the words of the Scripture.
Crib
If only the vital energy be not cribbed or cramped.
Crude
Molding to its will each successive deposit of the crude materials.
Crying
Too much fondness for meditative retirement is not the crying sin of our modern Christianity.
Cultured
The sense of beauty in nature, even among cultured people, is less often met with than other mental endowments.
cumbersome
He holds them in utter contempt, as lumbering, cumbersome, circuitous.
Determinative
Incidents . . . determinative of their course.
Discard
A man discards the follies of boyhood.
Discordance
There will arise a thousand discordances of opinion.
Disparagement
Imitation is a disparagement and a degradation in a Christian minister.
Disparity
The disparity between God and his intelligent creatures.
Dissident
The dissident, habituated and taught to think of his dissidenc as a laudable and necessary opposition to ecclesiastical usurpation.
Diversify
Its seven colors, that diversify all the face of nature.
Efflux
It is then that the devout affections . . . are incessantly in efflux.
Elysium
An Elysium more pure and bright than that of the Greeks.
Embellishment
The graces and embellishments of the exterior man.
encrustment
Disengaging truth from its encrustment of error.
Endowment
His early endowments had fitted him for the work he was to do.
Enhearten
The enemy exults and is enheartened.
Ensue
Damage to the mind or the body, or to both, ensues, unless the exciting cause be presently removed.
Ethics
The completeness and consistency of its morality is the peculiar praise of the ethics which the Bible has taught.
Exaggeration
No need of an exaggeration of what they saw.
Excursive
The course of excursive . . . understandings.
Exordial
The exordial paragraph of the second epistle.
Extant
The extant portraits of this great man.
Extenuate
Let us extenuate, conceal, adorn the unpleasing reality.
Extenuation
To listen . . . to every extenuation of what is evil.
Extrinsic
The extrinsic aids of education and of artificial culture.
Facilitate
To invite and facilitate that line of proceeding which the times call for.
Falter
Here indeed the power of disinct conception of space and distance falters.
fealty
He should maintain fealty to God.
Fester
The fester of the chain their necks.
flaccid
Religious profession . . . has become flacced.
Flagitious
Debauched principles and flagitious practices.
Flippant
To put flippant scorn to the blush.
Forefend
It would be a far better work . . . to forefend the cruelty.
Forethought
A sphere that will demand from him forethought, courage, and wisdom.
Frame
The human mind is framed to be influenced.
Fraught
Enterprises fraught with world-wide benefits.
futharc
The letters are called Runes and the alphabet bears the name Futhorc from the first six letters.
Gauge
There is not in our hands any fixed gauge of minds.
Gift
He was gifted . . . with philosophical sagacity.
Gloze
By glozing the evil that is in the world.
Gradation
The several gradations of the intelligent universe.
Grudge
The feeling may not be envy; it may not be imbittered by a grudge.
Helot
Those unfortunates, the Helots of mankind, more or less numerous in every community.
Horrific
Let . . . nothing ghastly or horrific be supposed.
Idiosyncrasy
The individual mind . . . takes its tone from the idiosyncrasies of the body.
Imagination
The power of the mind to decompose its conceptions, and to recombine the elements of them at its pleasure, is called its faculty of imagination.
Immensity
The immensity of the material system.
Imparity
In this region of merely intellectual notion we are at once encountered by the imparity of the object and the faculty employed upon it.
Impartation
The necessity of this impartation.
Incandescent
Holy Scripture become resplendent; or, as one might say, incandescent throughout.
Incertitude
He fails . . . from mere incertitude or irresolution.
Inchoation
It is now in actual progress, from the rudest inchoation to the most elaborate finishing.
Indigenous
Joy and hope are emotions indigenous to the human mind.
Inert
It present becomes extravagant, then imbecile, and at length utterly inert.
Infatuation
The infatuations of the sensual and frivolous part of mankind are amazing; but the infatuations of the learned and sophistical are incomparably more so.
Initiate
How are changes of this sort to be initiated?
Initiative
The undeveloped initiatives of good things to come.
Insuperable
The difficulty is enhanced, or is . . . insuperable.
Interloper
The untrained man, . . . the interloper as to the professions.
Intrinsic
He was better qualified than they to estimate justly the intrinsic value of Grecian philosophy and refinement.
Invariable
Physical laws which are invariable.
irrational
It seemed utterly irrational any longer to maintain it.
Jostle
Systems of movement, physical, intellectual, and moral, which are perpetually jostling each other.
Kindle
On all occasions where forbearance might be called for, the Briton kindles, and the Christian gives way.
Lapse
Bacon was content to wait the lapse of long centuries for his expected revenue of fame.
Meager
Of secular habits and meager religious belief.
Mean
The extremes we have mentioned, between which the wellinstracted Christian holds the mean, are correlatives.
Merge
Native irresolution had merged in stronger motives.
Mislike
Who may like or mislike what he says.
Mundane
The defilement of mundane passions.
Nucleus
It must contain within itself a nucleus of truth.
Nugatory
If all are pardoned, and pardoned as a mere act of clemency, the very substance of government is made nugatory.
Nullify
Such correspondence would at once nullify the conditions of the probationary system.
Occasion
The unlooked-for incidents of family history, and its hidden excitements, and its arduous occasions.
Occult
It is of an occult kind, and is so insensible in its advances as to escape observation.
Ordinarily
Those who ordinarily pride themselves not a little upon their penetration.
Outspend
A mere outspend of savageness.
Patristic
The voluminous editor of Jerome and of tons of patristic theology.
Paucity
Revelation denies it by the stern reserve, the paucity, and the incompleteness, of its communications.
Peer
Shall they consort only with their peers?
Pend
Pending upon certain powerful motions.
Perpetuity
The perpetuity of a single emotion is insanity.
Phraseology
Most completely national in his . . . phraseology.
Prerogative
The two faculties that are the prerogative of man -- the powers of abstraction and imagination.
Promptitude
Men of action, of promptitude, and of courage.
Prurient
The eye of the vain and prurient is darting from object to object of illicit attraction.
Punctilious
Punctilious in the simple and intelligible instances of common life.
Punitive
If death be punitive, so, likewise, is the necessity imposed upon man of toiling for his subsistence.
Rampant
The rampant stalk is of unusual altitude.
Recurrence
I shall insensibly go on from a rare to a frequent recurrence to the dangerous preparations.
Refrigerative
Crazed brains should come under a refrigerative treatment.
Relation
Any sort of connection which is perceived or imagined between two or more things, or any comparison which is made by the mind, is a relation.
Remedial
It is an evil not compensated by any beneficial result; it is not remedial, not conservative.
Repose
It is upon these that the soul may repose.
Residue
If church power had then prevailed over its victims, not a residue of English liberty would have been saved.
Retrench
These figures, ought they then to receive a retrenched interpretation?
Reverberative
This reverberative influence is that which we have intended above, as the influence of the mass upon its centers.
Rudiment
the single leaf is the rudiment of beauty in landscape.
Ruffle
The fantastic revelries . . . that so often ruffled the placid bosom of the Nile.
Ruminate
Apart from the hope of the gospel, who is there that ruminates on the felicity of heaven?
Scope
In the fate and fortunes of the human race, scope is given to the operation of laws which man must always fail to discern the reasons of.
Scud
The first nautilus that scudded upon the glassy surface of warm primeval oceans.
Secularity
A secularity of character which makes Christianity and its principal doctrines distasteful or unintelligible.
Segregate
They are still segregated, Christians from Christians, under odious designations.
Shale
Life, in its upper grades, was bursting its shell, or was shaling off its husk.
Sift
Let him but narrowly sift his ideas.
Sluice
This home familiarity . . . opens the sluices of sensibility.
Solution
It is unquestionably an enterprise of more promise to assail the nations in their hour of faintness and solution, than at a time when magnificent and seductive systems of worship were at their height of energy and splendor.
Sophism
Let us first rid ourselves of sophisms, those of depraved men, and those of heartless philosophers.
Squalor
The heterogeneous indigent multitude, everywhere wearing nearly the same aspect of squalor.
Stipendiate
It is good to endow colleges, and to found chairs, and to stipendiate professors.
Strenuous
Strenuous, continuous labor is pain.
Supplement
Causes of one kind must be supplemented by bringing to bear upon them a causation of another kind.
Tabulate
A philosophy is not worth the having, unless its results may be tabulated, and put in figures.
Theologue
He [Jerome] was the theologue -- and the word is designation enough.
Titan
The Titan physical difficulties of his enterprise.
Trench
Does it not seem as if for a creature to challenge to itself a boundless attribute, were to trench upon the prerogative of the divine nature?
Trilingual
The much-noted Rosetta stone . . . bears upon its surface a trilingual inscription.
Vague
This faith is neither a mere fantasy of future glory, nor a vague ebullition of feeling.
Valid
An answer that is open to no valid exception.
Vantage
It is these things that give him his actual standing, and it is from this vantage ground that he looks around him.
Vaticination
It is not a false utterance; it is a true, though an impetuous, vaticination.
Vicarious
The vicarious work of the Great Deliverer.
Virulence
The virulence of one declaimer, or the profundities and sublimities of the other.
Vivacious
The faith of Christianity is far more vivacious than any mere ravishment of the imagination can ever be.
Wage
The two are waging war, and the one triumphs by the destruction of the other.
Welter
Weltered hearts and blighted . . . memories.