"At first hand" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... artist, took delight in the statues which had been found, and the other signs of Greek and Roman art; but it is not to be supposed that he would know Homer and Virgil and Horace and Pindar and Sappho at first hand. He had, however, friends among the learned men, who could tell him of the treasures of classic literature, and his imagination was quick to seize this material and adapt it ...
— Raphael - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures And A Portrait Of The - Painter With Introduction And Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... the type. A thoughtful young girl, healthy, cultivated and, by the modern miracle, taught how to think. She studies vice conditions in Chicago at first hand and what she sees turns her into a crusader. This girl has spirit. Brought face to face with a great evil, moved by the appeal of helpless womanhood, she throws aside ...
— Little Lost Sister • Virginia Brooks
... to The Cloud-Messenger in perfection of every detail. Yet passages in it are as high and sweet as anything in these works. And over it is shed the magic charm of Kalidasa's style. Of that it is vain to speak. It can be had only at first hand. The final proof that The Dynasty of Raghu is a very great poem, is this: no one who once reads it can leave it ...
— Translations of Shakuntala and Other Works • Kaalidaasa
... violent or radical legislation. They are not to be settled by any one scheme or by any one plan. The only way to approach them is by careful and conscientious thought, a minute examination of the facts at first hand and a rigid determination to act toward corporations and business interests in general in the same spirit of unswerving honesty that you would wish to display to a comrade or to a friend and that you would wish to be displayed toward yourselves. ...
— Morals in Trade and Commerce • Frank B. Anderson
... of remonstrance and deprecation was his only reply. However, as it has always been my rule to seek information at first hand, I tried, in a friendly and confidential way, to draw him out respecting certain of his Church's usages and tenets, which I knew to be garbled and falsified by Protestant bigotry. But it was evident that throughout every fibre of his moral nature there ran a ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... columns of the Mercury. This was great promotion for me. In those days the provincial press had no direct connection with Ministers or the leaders of parties; and the "London correspondent" was not in a position to supply his readers with news at first hand, or with any news, indeed, that was at once original and authentic. Through Mr. Baxter I suddenly found myself placed in a position that enabled me to provide the Leeds Mercury with political and administrative news that was not only of the highest importance, but ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.
... favour of a greater vividness which places before the reader's brain, not historical statements, as it were, of motives and of facts, but word-paintings of things and persons, so chosen and arranged that the reader may see, as if at first hand, the spirit of Life at work before him. The new novel has as many bemoaners as the old novel had when it was new. It is no question of better or worse, but of differing forms—of change dictated by gradual suitability to the changing conditions of our social life, and to the ever fresh ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... is not acquired by means of mathematical operations or laboratory experiments, that is to say, three-fourths of the human phenomena which interest us most. Observe that the records collected by the investigators of the S. P. R., like those discussed by M. Bozzano, are all told at first hand and that those stories of which the narrators were not the protagonists or the direct witnesses have been ruthlessly rejected. Furthermore, some of these narratives are necessarily of the nature of medical observations; as for the others, ...
— The Unknown Guest • Maurice Maeterlinck
... rumors of gold or silver, and some one, believing the stories, made a map, maybe by hearsay, maybe at first hand. Maybe he talked too much, and some other fellow knocked him on the head and ...
— Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders on the Great American Desert • Jessie Graham Flower
... to fish, it is allowed that we are not an insular people for nothing. There are other forms of good living that Paris knows not of, so to speak, at first hand, native to England. Turtle soup, turbot and lobster sauce, a haunch of venison, and a grouse, are, we may say without chauvinism, a "truly royal repast." But we incur the contempt of foreigners once more in the matter of wines. To like ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... an original work in the highest form of vocal music. It is to be hoped that we shall often have the opportunity to "hear with our ears" this interesting work; for as a rule great musical compositions are peculiarly unfortunate among works of art, in being known at first hand by comparatively few persons. In this way is rendered possible that pretentious kind of dilettante criticism which is so common in musical matters, and which is often positively injurious, as substituting a factitious public ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... the rule of the Few, which will be either direct or representative, according as either they themselves by their own votes at first hand, or representatives whom they ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... taken a mouthful from the earth. They have never known a moment's real life of their own. Lying up to the sun in warmth and comfort—but leafless—they do not think of the hosts under them, smothered, strangled, starved. They take nothing at first hand. They experience described emotion, and think prepared thoughts. They live not in life, but in printed reports of life. They gather the odour of odours, not the odour itself: they do not hear, they overhear. A ...
— Adventures In Contentment • David Grayson
... education which does not culminate in the university, and make that the goal towards which its efforts are directed, is an absurdity. There must be good teachers before there can be good schools, and good teachers can only be formed in institutions that are chiefly concerned with knowledge at first hand. This has been a recognized principle in Germany for half a century, or longer; is now almost universally admitted in France, and is the goal toward which the whole ...
— Colleges in America • John Marshall Barker
... people in the world who have more opportunity for getting close to the hot, interesting things of one's time than the special correspondent of a great paper. He is enabled to see "the wheels go round;" has the chance of getting his knowledge at first hand. In stirring times the drama of life is to him like the first night of a play. There are no preconceived opinions for him to go by; he ought not to, at least, be influenced by any prejudices; and the account of the performance is to some extent ...
— Impressions of a War Correspondent • George Lynch
... Dictator awaited the return of the pursuing party, or some news of it. The last he in time received at first hand from the lips of its leader, who, after nightfall, had hastened back to the city and reported himself ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid
... subject to the state, which is the chief heir to our social inheritance. The family, however, is now, as it has always been, the interior, vital, and so far indispensable social relationship, beginning, as it does, at first hand the training of each individual toward membership in society-at-large. In the past, under the mother-rule, the social elements of the family were emphasized, since her power was one delegated by the ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer
... present instance there was an additional whet to appetite in the connection of Carew with Gethin. He was naturally an object of curiosity to his tenant Trevethick, and never before had the old man had the opportunity of hearing at first hand of the eccentricities of the Squire. In relating them Richard took good care to show by implication on what intimate terms he stood with him, and hinted at the obligation under which he had put him by throwing his ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... deities, with numerous identifications with each other and with the heavenly bodies, and explanations of their natures. It is needless to say that all this material is of enormous value for the study of the religion of the Babylonians and Assyrians, and enables us to reconstruct at first hand their mythological system, and note the changes which took place in the course of their long national existence. Many interesting and entertaining legends illustrate and supplement the information given by the bilingual lists of gods, the bilingual incantations and hymns, and the references ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Theophilus G. Pinches
... before Michelangelo and Raphael; and that, towards setting up as a critic of the present, he must understand the past out of which it had grown. So he determined to go to Florence and Venice, and to study the religious painters at first hand. ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood
... done so, in other words, that the aborigines of the more fertile districts near the sea have made a greater advance towards civilisation than the tribes of the desert interior. This is the view of men who have studied the Australian savages most deeply at first hand, and, so far as I can judge of the matter without any such first-hand acquaintance, I entirely agree with their opinion. I have given my reasons elsewhere and shall not repeat them here. All that I wish ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... are inserted, side by side with what would now be termed "local items," contemporary narratives of events, many of which have, in the lapse of more than a century, developed into historical proportions, but which here meet us, as it were, at first hand, clothed in such homely and impromptu dress as circumstances might require, with all their little roughnesses, excrescences, and absurdities upon them,—crude lumps of mingled fact and fiction, not yet moulded and polished into the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... the Nation, where the colored population is large, and where the conditions are the most favorable, to see what is their actual status as skilled workmen, in business, in the professions, and in their organizations; in short, to make a study, at first hand, of ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... that possibility they may be forearmed, if they will but believe that when love takes two people into its charge the physical consequences all come to seem natural and right and sacred. You need never know anything of these matters at first hand except when real love for some man or woman has mastered you, and then the experiences to which that love will lead you will be found to be pure, and simple, and happy. If you approach this part of life with reluctance or in fear, or with some mistaken sense of shame, you may spoil it, and ...
— Men, Women, and God • A. Herbert Gray
... emphasis is laid upon a knowledge of history, of constitutional, administrative and international law, politics, economics, diplomacy and any other subjects that may fall within the scope of action of the special official. When, however, a law-maker or a high administrative official deals at first hand with a great population, it is extremely important that he be so experienced and so fitted by temperament that he may know his people. He must see how far he can go without arousing too much opposition. Even in promoting good measures, it is often ...
— The Making of a Nation - The Beginnings of Israel's History • Charles Foster Kent and Jeremiah Whipple Jenks
... interested," he said, coming with me to the door. "If you don't mind rough spots now and then, I'll try to show you a few things at first hand." ...
— Jimgrim and Allah's Peace • Talbot Mundy
... guinea) that they can recapture this pleasure through a volume of twenty-four representative drawings collected under the apt title of Personalities (SECKER). Not for me to attempt detailed consideration, even if it were not the duty of every amateur to fall a victim at first hand to Mr. KAPP'S amazing art. But one can hardly pass without tribute such things as the head of the Japanese poet on page 1 ("Seer of Visions"), a really wonderful example of much meaning in few lines, or the WYNDHAM LEWIS, the only drawing in the book ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, February 4, 1920 • Various
... at me, and, protesting an engagement with her dentist, jauntily walked on. I was more interested than distressed. In those days my experience of life at first hand was small, and it excited me to come upon an incident among people I knew of the same sort as I had read in books. I confess that time has now accustomed me to incidents of this character among my acquaintance. But I was ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham
... of them ever told," and he leaned forward, quite at his ease again. "I have some business interests down that way, and so hear a good deal of what is going on at first hand. A New York gunman is so much worse than these amateurs out here there ain't no comparison. Why, I know ...
— The Strange Case of Cavendish • Randall Parrish
... Latimer could receive the same guests, even if the judge was away—even if some among her satellites were men whose reputations excluded them from all but the very smartest set. If she talked politics she did so in the pursuit of her affirmed desire to learn of politics at first hand. It could not be that she would descend to the plane of a lobbyist! But what would Judge Latimer think of this surprising fervor? He would not care to express himself as opposed to Burroughs. Did not Eva care for her husband's opinions—for his ...
— A Man of Two Countries • Alice Harriman
... volume in themselves; but inasmuch as an account of them would not make this story clearer and would occupy much space, it is enough to state the bare facts in a few words. Such tales of danger, suffering, and endurance have often been told at first hand, by the heroes of them, far more vividly and correctly than a mere story-teller can narrate ...
— The White Sister • F. Marion Crawford
... system of bringing up food and ammunition from the beaches to the firing line had now been practically worked out into a science at Helles and Anzac where Stopford would be given a chance of studying it at first hand. ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume 2 • Ian Hamilton
... much coal. For there is always music and always people. Neville had a critical appreciation of both. Then, for comic relief, there are politics. You cannot be really bored with a world which contains the mother of Parliaments, particularly if her news is communicated to you at first hand by one of her members. Disgusted you may be and are, if you are a right-minded person, ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay
... shall take great pleasure in mentioning your name in despatches. It will go direct, at first hand, to Her Majesty the Queen! There are few men, let me tell you, Sergeant Brown, who would dare what you dared in the first place. But, more than that, there are even fewer men who would leave a sweetheart in some one else's care while they blew ...
— Told in the East • Talbot Mundy
... mythology in situ, in 'the unrestrained utterances of the people,' Mr. Max Muller tells us, is no province of his. 'I saw it was hopeless for me to gain a knowledge at first hand of innumerable local legends and customs;' and it is to be supposed that he distrusted knowledge acquired by collectors: Grimm, Mannhardt, Campbell of Islay, and an army of others. 'A scholarlike knowledge of Maori or Hottentot mythology' was also beyond him. We, on the contrary, take our Maori ...
— Modern Mythology • Andrew Lang
... made in this spring of 1445 by Nuno Tristam. And of this, says Azurara, I know nothing very exact or at first hand, because Nuno Tristam was dead before the time that King Affonso (D. Henry's nephew) commanded me to write this history. But this much we do know, that he sailed straight to the Isle of Herons in ...
— Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D. • C. Raymond Beazley
... an earful of real Astounding Stories yourself, at first hand this summer, as one of the thirty thousand young men between the ages of seventeen and twenty-four enjoying those thirty glorious days and nights as a student-camper at one of Uncle Sam's Citizens' Military ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various
... say that if you let the carpenter have something to do he would give the scene itself, and you could have the effect of it at first hand." ...
— The Story of a Play - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... yonder is your gate, and there are you, and here am I; I mean that I know it to be a moral impossibility that any person can stray in at that gate from any point of the compass, with any sort of experience, gained at first hand, or derived from another, that can confute me ...
— Tom Tiddler's Ground • Charles Dickens
... said or done in his presence, he felt and penetrated nothing.[91] In other words, this is to say that his material of thought was not fact but image. When he plunged into reflection, he did not deal with the objects of reflection at first hand and in themselves, but only with the reminiscences of objects, which he had never approached in a spirit of deliberate and systematic observation, and with those reminiscences, moreover, suffused and ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... the human misery wrought by the enslavement of women through unwilling motherhood? Would you know the appalling sum of this misery better than any author, any scientist, any physician, any social worker can tell you? Hear the story from the lips of the women themselves. Learn at first hand what it means to make a broken drudge of a woman who might have been the happy mother of a few strong children. Learn from the words of the victims of involuntary motherhood what it means to them, to their children and to society to force ...
— Woman and the New Race • Margaret Sanger
... that such knowledge may be gained, effort has been made to put into the book only a minimum of matter calculated to take the student away from the Bible itself to a discussion about it and to put into it a maximum of such matter as will require him to study the scripture at first hand. ...
— The Bible Book by Book - A Manual for the Outline Study of the Bible by Books • Josiah Blake Tidwell
... with an Excellency, because what was alluded to in conversation as "the mystery of Samburan" had caused such a sensation in the Archipelago that even those in the highest spheres were anxious to hear something at first hand. Davidson had been summoned to an audience. It was a high official ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... years of delay into the main currents of human thought. But these dilatory methods of professional pedantry, miscalled "ethics," shall not longer be allowed to delay the publication of highly important principles which the public are entitled to know at once, and to know at first hand. Then, too, it is more than doubtful if any purely academic body could be found willing to become responsible for giving to the world conclusions so contrary to the vogue of the ...
— Q. E. D., or New Light on the Doctrine of Creation • George McCready Price
... during all these months been living. Katherine Mark was Real—Real in her beautiful quiet clothes, in her assurance, her ease, the sense that she gave that she knew life and love and business and all the affairs of men at first hand, not only seen through a mist of superstition and ignorance, or indeed ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... they waited. Addison departed suddenly that morning, however, and as Mr. Lawton never gave any sign of being aware of what had taken place, they kept silent. I located the second boy, and got his story at first hand. His name is Johnnie Bradley and he's as stupid as the other one ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander
... Kit heard at first hand all the veiled suspicion against himself as voiced in the fragment of old newspaper wrapped around Fidelio's tobacco, and he and Dona Jocasta spread out the records written by the padre, and signed by Jocasta and the others, as witness of how Philip ...
— The Treasure Trail - A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine • Marah Ellis Ryan
... thing in fiction but the oldest thing in poetry. Chaucer, the first in time of our great English poets, was true to this old tradition. He was page, squire, soldier, statesman, diplomat, traveler; and then he was a poet, who portrayed in verse the many-colored life which he knew intimately at first hand. ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... genius. He was a strong man, massive in his individuality, full of profound feeling and deep spirituality, and dominated by a powerful will. He was no mere sentimentalist and versifier, but a student at first hand of Nature and all her mysteries,—a man whose profound meditations had pierced to the centre of things, and who held great thoughts in keeping for a waiting and expectant world. His outward life was full of proofs of the wide and deep benevolence of his nature; and it was only shallow ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... grave, picking up a smattering of cant phrases that are in the air—"Zolaism,"—"Ibsenites," "Decadents," "Symbolism," "the new humour," "the strong-man poetry," and what not—but to become acquainted at first hand with the meaning or meaninglessness of these phrases is denied him by the hard conditions of his life. Publishers would greatly help the proposed society by sending out ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... the superior white race to subjugate the minds of the inferior races whom they wished to exploit, and who would have destroyed them by force of numbers if their minds had not been subjugated. As this process is in operation still, and can be studied at first hand not only in our Church schools and in the struggle between our modern proprietary classes and the proletariat, but in the part played by Christian missionaries in reconciling the black races of Africa to their subjugation by European ...
— Bernard Shaw's Preface to Major Barbara • George Bernard Shaw
... on every occasion, and sits through the visit. I must speak plainly to you, my dear, as I have a right to. If the minister has anything of importance to say, let it come through the lips of some mature person. It may lose something of the fervor with which it would have been delivered at first hand, but the great rules of Christian life are not so dependent on the particular individual who speaks them, that you must go to this or that young man to find out what they are. If to any man, I should prefer the old gentleman whom you have mentioned in your letters, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... thought of Kinsale and his former connection. Was he secretly working with them still? Was there a plot to frustrate Everson's plans? At least the best thing to do was to get out to the wreck and answer our many questions at first hand. ...
— The Treasure-Train • Arthur B. Reeve
... of poems from the popular ballads down, exclusive of long poems. In the meantime existing anthologies may be used with the present volume. The following list includes rather more of the other authors than can probably be studied at first hand in one college year. The editions named are chosen because they combine inexpensiveness with satisfactory quality. It is the author's experience that a sufficient number of them to meet the needs of the class may well be supplied by the college. 'Everyman' means the editions in the 'Everyman ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... possessing, in addition to the qualities of a Roman tyrant, many of the least lovable traits of the ghila monster of Arizona. Hearing this about her father, and having already had the privilege of meeting her brother and studying him at first hand, his heart bled for Maud. It seemed to him that existence at the castle in such society must ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... when she said his mind was above the average. Its one claim to superiority lay in the fact that it had received the little training it had at first hand. What he knew of geography he knew, not from maps, but from actual observation in many parts of the world. Higher mathematics were unknown to him, but through years of experience he had learned to solve the most difficult of all problems—that of making ends meet. ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... when people were admiring her brow she was wondering whether there were a good fire in her bedroom. She was simple, kind and good; inexpressive but not inhuman or stupid. Now and again she dropped something that had a sifted, selected air—the sound of an impression at first hand. She had no imagination, but she had added up her feelings, some of her reflections, about life. Lyon talked of the old days in Munich, reminded her of incidents, pleasures and pains, asked her about her father and ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... of Pascal’s final conversion and retirement from the world. Jacqueline’s details fill in the briefer sketch of Madame Périer, and both tell the story at first hand. None could have known so well as they did all the circumstances. It is remarkable, therefore, that neither of them says anything of the well-known incident, emphasised by Bossut as the mainly exciting cause of ...
— Pascal • John Tulloch
... the appreciator so that he makes it a real part of his experience of life, then the thing called art is only an exercise in dexterity for the maker and a pastime for the receiver; it is not art. But art is not quite the same as life at first hand; it is rather the distillment of it. In order to render the significance of life as he has perceived and felt it, the artist selects and modifies his facts; and his work depends for its expressiveness upon ...
— The Gate of Appreciation - Studies in the Relation of Art to Life • Carleton Noyes
... the messengers, and the witnesses to the existence of the Promised Land, into which the whole people was to enter. And so it is here: all men should come under the influence of the scientific method; and every child should be able to experiment at first hand, to observe, and to put himself in contact with reality. Thus the flights of the imagination will start from a higher plane henceforth, and the intelligence will be directed into its natural ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori
... requested. "Let us get this at first hand. Is the servant you refer to still out in ...
— The Boy Scout Camera Club - The Confession of a Photograph • G. Harvey Ralphson
... following weeks Paulus remembered some things in the conversation of this day, which at the time had made but slight impression on him. The stories of professors and teachers had meant little until he knew at first hand the lentil suppers and brilliant talking at the house of Taurus, the ethical discussions with Peregrinus in his hovel on the outskirts of the city, and, most of all, the generous and ennobling hospitality, in his city house and villas, ...
— Roads from Rome • Anne C. E. Allinson
... connection between the facts previously stated and Darwin's theory of the origin of species by variation and natural selection. The keynote of Lyell's work, throughout his life, was observation. Lyell was no cabinet geologist; he went to nature and studied phenomena at first hand. Possessed of abundant leisure and ample means he travelled far and wide, patiently collecting material and building up the modern science of physical geology, whose foundations had been laid by Hutton and Playfair. From ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell
... always a night prowler. What other women learn now from the evening newspaper or from neighborly gossip she, being created without a sense of fear, went forth in her time and gathered at first hand. ...
— Vanguards of the Plains • Margaret McCarter
... had any considerable opportunity to observe married life will forget what they have read in novels and will fix their minds on what they have observed at first hand, they will recognize the Norman marriage, with the husband and wife living together yet apart as not peculiar but of a rather common type. Neither Fred nor Dorothy had any especial reason on any given day to try to alter their relations; so the law of inertia asserted ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips
... and the billiard room to discuss it. Some of the men, notably "Cy" Warner and "Rufe" Smith, local representatives of the big Boston dailies, hurried off to the life-saving station to get the facts at first hand. Others came down to talk with Captain Jerry and Elsie. Melissa Busteed's shawl was on her shoulders and her "cloud" was tied about her head in less than two minutes after her next-door neighbor shouted the story across the back yards. She had just left the house, and Captain Jerry was delivering ...
— Cap'n Eri • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... Darrow—that he charges money sometimes. For years and years Mr. Darrow has been enlivening the intellectual purlieus of the city with his debates. And Mr. Darrow's debates have been always worth $1, $2 and even $5—for various reasons. It is worth at least $5 to observe at first hand what a cheering and invigorating effect Mr. Darrow's pessimism has had upon Mr. Darrow ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... eulogized the work of the missionaries and we cannot conceive that anybody who really knows of their work at first hand, not as it is to be found in extreme cases, but as ordinarily carried on, should do otherwise than ...
— Where Half The World Is Waking Up • Clarence Poe
... echoed these sentiments warmly and sincerely; for, as strange as it may appear to those who have not studied human nature at first hand, every word of this eulogy was ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... discovered life of the West. Bret Harte had left his indelible stamp upon the literature of the land, and Mark Twain was soon to spread widely his impressions of life as seen in "Roughing It"; while countless newspaper men and book writers were edging out and getting hearsay stories of things known at first hand by a very few careful and ...
— The Story of the Outlaw - A Study of the Western Desperado • Emerson Hough
... the work well, for he was shortly selected to serve the new rulers as court painter. Rubens' experience with Van Veen closed a ten years' apprenticeship in the studios of Antwerp, and now he determined to go to Italy, where he could study the masters at first hand. ...
— Great Artists, Vol 1. - Raphael, Rubens, Murillo, and Durer • Jennie Ellis Keysor
... good mind to go, anyway," said the old man, suddenly, "I would like to write a paper on the habits of the Patagonians and how can I if I don't study them at first hand?" ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... books more surprising than to those whose own life is faithfully and smartly pictured? But this danger is all upon one side; and you may judiciously flatter the portrait without any likelihood of the sitter's disowning it for a faithful likeness. And so Whitman has reasoned: that by drawing at first hand from himself and his neighbours, accepting without shame the inconsistencies and brutalities that go to make up man, and yet treating the whole in a high, magnanimous spirit, he would make sure of belief, and ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... it must have been very unpleasant, but it seemed to be the only practicable way of dealing with the situation. I am glad to say that it did not last very long, for by the time they were two weeks old the young loons were able to take their fish and reptiles and insects at first hand. ...
— Forest Neighbors - Life Stories of Wild Animals • William Davenport Hulbert
... girl, quickly, but smiling. "We young ones have got to learn through our own experiences, haven't we? When you were young, sir, you had to learn at first hand—isn't that so? You would not accept the opinions of the older men as ...
— Janice Day at Poketown • Helen Beecher Long
... impenetrable; but he knew shapes of terror, demons of longing and grief and guilt loomed there, waiting for him. He knew that he was about to understand a little of life in a very ancient and commonplace way: the way of experience and of reality: that at first hand he was to have the taste against his palate of that bitterness and desolation, that terror and helplessness, which make the songs and fictions of man one endless tragedy.... Destiny was taking him, as the jailer who comes to the condemned man's cell on the ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... said the postilion; 'and now I'm sure I am not mistaken about you; you have taken lessons yourself, at first hand, in the college vacations, and a promising pupil you were, I make no doubt. Well, your friends will be all the happier to get you back. Has ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... of the sea also, in one of which, "The Pilot," he took as his hero John Paul Jones, tales founded on his own knowledge of a sailor's life won at first hand; but it was the Indian tales that brought him greatest fame. Whether the pictures of the men of the Six Nations be accurate or not they made direct appeal to the imagination of the world, and Indian character will always stand as Cooper drew it. Shakespeare and Scott have made ...
— Historic Boyhoods • Rupert Sargent Holland
... difference, that difference includes bluer skies, brighter streets and gardens, and all the originals of which you have here the copies. There, at least, I shall have the fashion of my peruke and my speech at first hand. Here you only adopt a mode when Paris ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... that their cause is lost for the time. I believe that your uncle is contemplating an early visit to England. He is of the opinion that perhaps he has misunderstood the Allied point of view, and he is going to study matters at first hand." ...
— The Pawns Count • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... student in English books; and to these he is exclusively referred for this part of his knowledge. In the small portion of original texts that a pupil at school or college toils through, he necessarily gets a few of the historical facts at first hand; but he could much more easily get these few where he gets the rest—in the English compilations. Admitting, then, that the history and institutions of Greece and Rome constitute a valuable education, it is in our power to secure it ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain
... all that you said just now about me and my husband, and about our life together after you had, as you put it, led me back into the path of duty—there was nothing that you knew at first hand. From that moment you never again set foot in our house—you, who had been ...
— Ghosts - A Domestic Tragedy in Three Acts • Henrik Ibsen
... list of the Philadelphia magazines is impossible. Many of them have disappeared and left not a rack behind. The special student of Pennsylvania history will detect some omissions in these pages, for all that has here been done has been done at first hand, and where a magazine was inaccessible to me, I have not attempted to see it through the eyes of a more fortunate investigator. I have done my best to make the story, dull and dreary as it surely is at times, not ...
— The Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors 1741-1850 • Albert Smyth
... all the same thing. There is no inequality in the region of art; and I have seen things on the vaudeville stage which were graced with touches of truth so exquisite, so ideally fine, that I might have believed I was getting them at first hand and pure from the street-corner. Of course, the poor fellows who had caught them from life had done their worst to imprison them in false terms, to labor them out of shape, and build them up in acts ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... is wont to increase with the supply, as is the case with gold and silver, but not with learned books, optical instruments etc. Many commodities have but little circulating capacity, because no one desires to purchase them but at first hand. See ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher
... YOURSELF by pleasing your MOTHER; presently the mere triumphing over your temper will delight your vanity and confer a more delicious pleasure and satisfaction upon you than even the approbation of your MOTHER confers upon you now. You will then labor for yourself directly and at FIRST HAND, not by the roundabout way through your mother. It simplifies the matter, and it also ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... that she had felt so uneasy about the possible outcome of Chichikov's whim, that during the three nights following his departure she had been unable to sleep a wink; whereafter, in spite of the fact that her horses were not shod, she had set off for the town, in order to learn at first hand how the dead souls were faring, and whether (which might God forfend!) she had not sold them at something like a third of their true value. The consequences of her venture the reader will learn from ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... books the boys have read," he observed, after examining for the Arnold Prize, "but I cannot see that they make any use of what they have read. They seem to have power of assimilation." The study of authorities at first hand, to which he had given so much of his own time, he regarded as the work of a few, and as occupation for later years. The faculty of thinking, and the art of writing, could not be learned ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... people of Nantes, and from here I can speak at once to the greatest number of Nantais of all ranks, and it is my desire—and the desire of those whom I represent—that as great a number as possible should hear my message at first hand." ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... say so," said Pud. "Well, there is one thing sure that I'm learning some geography at first hand this morning." ...
— Bob Hunt in Canada • George W. Orton
... said, "is the precise effect?" He was really interested. He had always been curious to know how different men affected different women, and to get his knowledge at first hand. ...
— The Helpmate • May Sinclair
... getting on to ground perilous for me, because Marget had evidently heard something and was determined to test it at first hand. Behind the curiosity there seemed, judging by her tone, to be a fight going on between friendliness and pique. It is a dangerous mixture for a man to have to counteract in a woman, because, responding to the friendliness, he may make admissions ...
— The Black Colonel • James Milne
... detail of life, to have time either for brooding meditation or for the metaphysics of religious inquiry; and, at least in 1866, Christianity interested him mainly as one of the most potent shaping forces of human society. The desire to follow out and investigate at first hand certain of its modern manifestations helped to direct the impulse for travel which was ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... quotes Cassiodorus (twice), John of Damascus, Boethius, Thomas Aquinas, St. Bernard, St. Augustine (thrice), St. Basil, and St. Ambrose—a goodly list of Fathers, if we had any reason to suppose that the quotations were made at first hand. ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... of original authorities for the whole of the period 461-1003 would be too long in proportion to the text of this book, but a few of the most important may be mentioned for the sake of those who wish to begin to study the period at first hand. Any ...
— The Church and the Barbarians - Being an Outline of the History of the Church from A.D. 461 to A.D. 1003 • William Holden Hutton
... business to be found in a canoe just discovered under the mud of Clyde, and cleared out by Mr. Bruce himself, a man or affairs, and of undisputed probity. In this case the precise site of the dubious relics is given, by a man of honour, at first hand. I confess that my knowledge of human nature does not enable me to contest Mr. Bruce's written attestation, while I marvel at the astuteness of the forger. As a finder, on this occasion, Mr. Bruce was in precisely the same position as Dr. Munro at Elie when, as he says, "as the second ...
— The Clyde Mystery - a Study in Forgeries and Folklore • Andrew Lang
... like him, but more than that, they respect him. You know, mother, that I can tell something at first hand about learning one's job. But these officers put the average civilian to shame. I doubt if there is stronger professional feeling, or a higher standard of professional achievement, anywhere in the world. If all the other officers are like our ...
— At Plattsburg • Allen French
... from school and served a long apprenticeship to a silver-plate engraver." This is printed in Allan Cunningham's Life of Hogarth, together with many more extracts from autobiographical memoranda, from which we may learn at first hand a great deal of information bearing on the state of painting at this period, and the circumstances under which it received such a stimulus from Hogarth, before the sun had fully risen (in the person of Reynolds) to illumine the whole period ...
— Six Centuries of Painting • Randall Davies
... on at a lazy mule trot, hearing the unwritten annals of the range from one who had seen them enacted at first hand. Pretty soon we passed a herd of burros with mealy, dusty noses and spotty hides, feeding on prickly pears and rock lichens; and just before sunset we slid down the last declivity out upon the plateau and came to a camp as was ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories • Various
... down his personal observations of the plants and animals of the New World, and particularly the account of the Indians, to which his third book is devoted, and which is accompanied by valuable plates. Beverly's knowledge of these matters was evidently at first hand, and his descriptions here are very fresh and interesting. The more strictly historical part of his work is not free from prejudice and inaccuracy. A more critical, detailed, and impartial, but much less readable, work was William Stith's ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... contemporaries of Lincoln to whom credit for material is given in the original edition, scarcely a dozen are living at the date of this second edition. Therefore, the value of these reminiscences increases with time. They were gathered largely at first hand. They can never be replaced, nor can they ever be ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... compared with Colonel Roosevelt. Both would like to know all things, and both have had, and have exercised more, perhaps, than any other two living men, the power to bring to themselves the central figures in all manner of world events, and thus learn at first hand, from acknowledged authorities, about the subjects that interest ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... book claims the qualifications of an observer who, during many years, has studied the ways and thoughts of the Natives of South Africa on the spot, not through interpreters, but at first hand, through the medium of their own speech, which he professes to know as well as the ...
— The Black Man's Place in South Africa • Peter Nielsen
... Hal and Chester, "are the two officers who overheard the plot to kidnap President Poincare. I have called you here that you may hear their story at first hand." He turned to the two lads. "This," he said, "is General Gallieni, military governor of Paris. You will repeat to ...
— The Boy Allies in the Trenches - Midst Shot and Shell Along the Aisne • Clair Wallace Hayes
... was not worried by officialdom until long after his housekeeper and her daughter had recovered from the shock of learning that they were, in a sense, connected at first hand with a ghastly and ...
— The Postmaster's Daughter • Louis Tracy
... confession is in verse 5, which contrasts his former and present knowledge of God, as being mere hearsay before, and eyesight now. A clearer understanding, but still more, a sense of His nearness, and an acquaintance at first hand, are implied in the bold words, which must not be interpreted of any outward revelation to sense, but of the direct, full, thrilling consciousness of God which makes all men's words about Him seem ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... dumdum bullet. (They make a small entrance hole and burst the limb open in exit.) The man who bayoneted him died in the next bed to him in the Clearing Hospital yesterday morning. You feel that they have all been doing that and worse. We hear at first hand from officers and men specified local ...
— Diary of a Nursing Sister on the Western Front, 1914-1915 • Anonymous
... assizes or on State visits, were occasions for the dissemination of news. The ordinary citizen gathered news and information also from the pulpit and from guild and parochial meetings, and from the bellman. The only authoritative news he received at first hand he got by listening to the ...
— Life in a Medival City - Illustrated by York in the XVth Century • Edwin Benson
... Philip Henry (1810-88): was an example of that almost extinct type— a naturalist with a wide knowledge gained at first hand from nature as a whole. This width of culture was combined with a severe and narrow religious creed, and though, as Edmund Gosse points out, there was in his father's case no reconcilement of science and religion, since his "impressions ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin
... efforts have contributed nobly to supply the material for extending it, and for the application of that comparative method which, in philology as in other sciences, has been so fruitful. Hence it is that so many leading theologians have come to know at first hand the truths given by this science, and to recognise its fundamental principles. What the conclusions which they, as well as all other scholars in this field, have been absolutely forced to accept, I shall now endeavour ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... a valuable criticism of life by a man who had a wide experience of life, a man of the world, who possessed an almost inspired faculty of observation. Schopenhauer, of all men, unmistakably observed life at first hand. There is no academic echo in his utterances; he is not one of a school; his voice has no formal intonation; it is deep, full-chested, and rings out its words with all the poignancy of individual emphasis, without bluster, but with unfailing conviction. He was for his time, and for his ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... thought differently, and, if we are to judge by the consequences of what, happened to him in Wetzlar, both for himself and for the world, posterity is right.[123] Be it said also, that contemporary testimony at first hand leaves us in no doubt that, but for his Wetzlar experience, one of the most remarkable phases in Goethe's development would not have found expression, and one resounding note in European literature would have ...
— The Youth of Goethe • Peter Hume Brown
... way selfish or calculating. Oh no, that is impossible. I must not be fanciful. Marmy warned me that I might find her self-contained and even self-opinionated, but that is very different from anything mean or selfish. It is sad, all the same, to know nothing of one's own child for one's self, at first hand. Whatever the poor Harpers' trials have been,' she went on, as Frances had once said to Bessie, 'at least they have been spared this ...
— Robin Redbreast - A Story for Girls • Mary Louisa Molesworth
... was a change in Diane Sampson. She became feverishly active. She wanted to ride, to see for herself what was going on in Linrock, to learn of that wild Pecos county life at first hand. ...
— The Rustlers of Pecos County • Zane Grey
... a hiding-place was quickened by the announced determination of the French king, Francis I, to put an end to religious dissent among his subjects. Calvin abruptly left France and found an asylum in the Swiss town of Basel, where he became acquainted at first hand with the type of reformed religion which Zwingli had propagated and where he proceeded to write a full account of the Protestant position as contrasted with the Catholic. This exposition,—The Institutes of the Christian Religion,—which ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... made up from the writings of naturalists who have told us of the behavior of animals as they have seen it at first hand and of the beginnings and the growth of life so far as they know about it. In selecting these from the wealth of available material the editor has been guided by this rule: The subject matter must be interesting to young people; it must be told in a clear and attractive ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... Sir Ethelred? A new man's antagonism to old methods. A desire to know something at first hand. Some impatience. It's my old work, but the harness is different. It has been chafing me a little in one or two ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad |
