"Didactic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... cultivate the principles of virtue and religion in the mind of youth of both sexes"; the author of "Sanford and Merton" has here his literary progenitor. The sub-title, "or Virtue Rewarded," also indicates the homiletic nature of the book. And since the one valid criticism against all didactic aims in story-telling is that it is dull, Richardson, it will be appreciated, ran a mighty risk. But this he was able to escape because of the genuine human interest of his tales and the skill he displayed with psychologic ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... it is even probable that, if my father had devoted himself to the art, he might have become the author of some elegant and popular didactic poem, on some ordinary subject, which his fancy would have adorned with grace and his sensibility invested with sentiment; some small volume which might have reposed with a classic title upon our library shelves, and served as a prize volume at Ladies' Schools. ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... question, used with a knowledge of its meaning and of the functions of the writ hardly less remarkable than that evinced in the passage from "Henry VIII.," though expressed in a different manner, owing chiefly to the fact that Drayton wrote a didactic poem and Shakespeare a drama. But Drayton is not known to have been an attorney's clerk, nor has he been suspected, from his writings, or any other cause, to have had any knowledge of the law. Both he and Shakespeare, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... values to be had by knowledge. They pursued erudition and built their poetry upon erudition, not in the didactic way of the Augustans, but as a mine of poetic material and suggestion. Far more truly than Wordsworth's this poetry could claim to be the impassioned expression which is in the face of science; for Wordsworth's knowledge is a mystic insight ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
... greater in his case. This was obvious—almost a truism; but the illustration by means of which he brought it home to his hearers was certainly born of poetic imagination. The life of the ordinary person he likened to that of the canary in its cage. And here, dropping his lofty didactic manner, and—if I may coin a word—smalling his deep, sonorous voice, to a thin reedy treble, in imitation of the tenuous fringilline pipe, he went on with lively language, rapid utterance, and suitable brisk movements and gestures, to describe the little lemon-coloured housekeeper in her gilded ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... will not let me take my sea-bath every morning; they say it makes me too weak. Do they mean in the head, I wonder?... "Let the sanguine then take warning, and the disheartened take courage, for to every hope and every fear, to every joy and every sorrow, there comes a last day," which is but a didactic form of dear Mademoiselle Descuillier's conjuring of our impatiences: "Cela viendra, ma chere, cela viendra, car tout vient dans ce monde; cela passera, ma chere, cela passera, car tout passe dans ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... meta-thing. Used to stand for a real object in didactic examples (especially database tutorials). Legend has it that the original widgets were holders for buggy whips. "But suppose the parts list for a widget has 52 entries...." 2. [poss. evoking 'window gadget'] A user interface object in ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... his next, to introduce himself, to explain his projects and to submit his tragedy to the manager of a London theatre. The manuscript was returned after some months delay, with the intimation that it was too poetic and too didactic, and would require extensive revision before it could be brought upon the stage. Accident, rather than good luck, threw Banim across his path, and he proved to be a valuable and a faithful friend. In the little sanctum at the rear of No 7 Amelia Place, Brompton, ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 1, January 1886 • Various
... for our dislike are not exactly the same. I wish to express, that we become tired of the task before we can comprehend the beauty; that we learn by rote before we can get by heart; that the freshness is worn away, and the future pleasure and advantage deadened and destroyed, by the didactic anticipation, at an age when we can neither feel nor understand the power of compositions which it requires an acquaintance with life, as well as Latin and Greek, to relish, or to reason upon. For the same reason, we never can be aware of the fulness of some of the finest passages of Shakspeare ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... unchristian to repine at the providential failure of her efforts. Denis's deductions were, of course, a little less direct than his mother's. He had, besides, been fond of Arthur, and his efforts to keep the poor fellow straight had been less didactic and more spontaneous. Their result read itself, if not in any change in Arthur's character, at least in the revised wording of his will; and Denis's moral sense was pleasantly fortified by the discovery that it very substantially paid to ...
— Sanctuary • Edith Wharton
... gaily at good Lady Fenimore's somewhat didactic reproof. "You know I'm not an absolute idiot. Fancy the poor dear coming home all over bandages and sticking-plaster. 'Where's your V. C?' 'I haven't got it.' 'Then go back at once and get it or I shan't love you.' Poor darling!" Suddenly ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... dramatic, not didactic, or epic, or pastoral. Pope was not so deep in the drama as in other matters, and Cibber was one of its luminaries; he wrote some of the best comedies of his day. He also succeeded where Dryden, for lack of true dramatic taste, failed. He tampered successfully ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade
... that speaks the vacant mind." Most of us, in this work-a-day world, find no small benefit from allowing our minds to lie fallow at certain times, as farmers do with their fields. In the following pages, however, I believe wisdom and wit, the didactic and the diverting, will be found in ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... in one of the inner rooms, was writing a home letter, which was chiefly remarkable for what it failed to relate. It gave long accounts of the scenery, it waxed didactic over the future of the country; but the adventures of the trip, with her incidental acquaintance with the Daxes and Chugg, were not recorded. Eudora announced the arrival of Mrs. Yellett, and Mary, at the news, dropped the contents ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... Grumkow himself, and in her despair is knocking at every door. Junius Brutus is said to have had paternal affections withal. Friedrich Wilhelm, alone against the whispers of his own heart and the voices of all men, yields at last in this cause. To Seckendorf, who has chalked out a milder didactic plan of treatment, still rigorous enough, [His Letter to the King, 1st November, 1730 (in Forster, i. 375, 376).] he at last admits that such plan is perhaps good; that the Kaiser's Letter has turned the scale with him; and the didactic method, not the beheading one, shall ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... antithesis of the Greek Voltaire, "Painting is dumb poetry, and poetry is speaking painting," can never have been found in any didactic work; it was an idea, amongst others, of Simonides, and the truth it contains is so evident that we feel compelled to overlook the indistinctness and error ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VIII (of X) - Continental Europe II. • Various
... conclusion of this unequalled drama, epitomized somewhat at undue length, in order to show the reader how much the philosophy that had awakened in the age of Solon now actuated the creations of poetry. Not that Aeschylus, like Euripides, deals in didactic sentences and oracular aphorisms. He rightly held such pedantries of the closet foreign to the tragic genius [22]. His philosophy is in the spirit, and not in the diction of his works—in vast conceptions, not laconic maxims. He does not preach, but he inspires. ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... may be said that didactic poetry affords special facilities to the translator, inasmuch as it bears a more close relation to prose than verse of other descriptions. Didactic poets, such as Lucretius and Pope, are almost forced by the inexorable ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... upon the duties of a governor. The King, the Queen, and a privy councillor, Antonio de Fonseca, were the persons present; and, as I imagine, the latter addressed Ovando on the part of their Highnesses. As it is not often that we have an opportunity of hearing a didactic lecture on the modes and duties of government given in the presence of a great master of that art, and probably looked over, if not prepared, by him, we must enter the royal cabinet, and hear some part ...
— The Life of Columbus • Arthur Helps
... immaterial and spiritual realities it would body forth, its utterances must always be symbolic, never literal. We can see how needlessly they embarrass themselves who deny the name of fine art to any work whose theme is not beautiful, or which is not morally didactic. Finally, we can see that if fine art be but an extension of language, there can be no immediate connection between art as art, and general moral character; no more reason for supposing that skilful and beautiful ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... "Legende of Good Women", is told by Ovid in "Metamorphosis", vi. 426-674. Cretiens li Gois is cited by the author of the "Ovide moralise" as the author of the episode of Philomena incorporated in his long didactic poem. This episode has been ascribed to Chretien de Troyes by many recent critics, and has been separately edited by C. de Boer, who offers in his Introduction a lengthy discussion of its authorship. See C. de Boer, "Philomena, conte raconte ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... be offended," says Johnson, "if I advance, in opposition to many authorities, that poetical devotion cannot often please. The doctrines of religion may indeed be defended in a didactic poem; and he who has the happy power of arguing in verse, will not lose it because his subject is sacred. A poet may describe the beauty and the grandeur of nature, the flowers of spring and the harvests of autumn, the vicissitudes of ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... for knowledge; and as they learned their rights and duties as citizens from their orators, so they hung on the lips of the 'lofty, grave tragedians' for instruction touching their origin, duty, and destiny as mortal and immortal beings.... Greek tragedy is essentially didactic, ethical, mythological, ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... Problems.—Galds is not the most skilled technician among the Spaniards who discuss, through the drama, the burning problems of the day. Linares Rivas excels him in this rather ephemeral branch of dramaturgy. But Galds has the great advantage of breadth. He is never didactic in the narrow sense. He sometimes hints at a moral in the last words of a play, but he is never so lacking in artistic feeling as to expound his thesis in set terms, like Echegaray and Brieux. The intention ...
— Heath's Modern Language Series: Mariucha • Benito Perez Galdos
... critics of English literature (including ten Brink), who have assigned the English play to the reign of Edward IV., i.e. not later than 1483. As in the Miracle Plays, so in the Moralities, an original purely didactic purpose was gradually influenced by a desire to render the didacticism more palatable to a popular audience by the introduction of humorous incidents. The complete absence of these from Everyman naturally caused critics to assign it the earliest possible date, so long as it was ...
— Fifteenth Century Prose and Verse • Various
... scarcely be of extreme antiquity. Probably, in the original poem, the dead return to rebuke the extreme grief of the Mother, but the poem is perhaps really more affecting in the absence of a didactic motive. Scott obtained it from an old woman in West Lothian. Probably the reading "fashes," (troubles), "in the flood" is correct, not "fishes," or "freshes." The mother desires that the sea may never cease to be troubled ...
— A Collection of Ballads • Andrew Lang
... seventy-five."[243] The one supernatural idea which seems to have deepened with old age and remained undisturbed to the end was his belief in his attendant genius. In what he wrote during his last years his mood was almost entirely introspective, contemplative, and didactic, yet here and there he introduces a sentence which lets in a little light from his way of life and personal affairs, and helps to show how he occupied himself, and what his humour was. He tells how ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... he lived in as "critical, didactic, paradoxical, romantic."[1] It was the age of the Edinburgh Review, of the Utilitarians, of Godwin and Shelley, of Wordsworth and Byron—in a word of the French Revolution and all that it brought in its train. Poetry in this age was impregnated with politics; ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... Didactic nostr prora & puppis esto: Investigare, & invenire modum, quo Docentes minus doceant, Discentes vero plus discant: Schol minus habeant Strepitus, nause, vani laboris; plus autem otii, deliciarum, solidique profectus: Respublica Christiana minus tenebrarum confusionis dissidiorum; ...
— The Orbis Pictus • John Amos Comenius
... does your own brief definition of poetry, "the rhythmic creation of the beautiful," exhaust your theory, and so perfectly is the theory illustrated by the poems. Natural bent, and reaction against the example of Mr. Longfellow, combined to make you too intolerant of what you call the "didactic" element in verse. Even if morality be not seven-eighths of our life (the exact proportion as at present estimated), there was a place even on the Hellenic Parnassus for gnomic bards, and theirs in the nature of the case must always be the ...
— Letters to Dead Authors • Andrew Lang
... Anglia. They are all quite ordinary people and unknown to fame, with the exception of Marco Polo. The types of historical evidence illustrated are the estate book of a manorial lord, the chronicle and traveller's tale, the bishop's register, the didactic treatise in household management, the collection of family letters, and houses, brasses, and wills. At the end of the book I have added a bibliography of the sources which form the raw material for my reconstructions, and a few additional ...
— Medieval People • Eileen Edna Power
... could not well have been altogether missed by such a one as Friedrich. So that perhaps we exaggerate the effects of Voltaire on him, though undoubtedly they were considerable. Considerable; but not derived from this express correspondence, which seldom turns on didactic points at all; derived rather from Voltaire's Printed WORKS, where they lay derivable to all the world. Certain enough it is, Voltaire was at this time, and continued all his days, Friedrich's chief Thinker in the world; unofficially, the chief Preacher, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. X. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—At Reinsberg—1736-1740 • Thomas Carlyle
... effeminacy of the American press, and show up the sausage-venders and Cleons of the Republic in their true light? How long will the richest field of national folly in the world remain unreaped, save by the crotchety sickles of dull moralists and didactic pamphleteers? ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... is an ethic, or simply didactic and instructive architecture, the decoration of which you will find to be normally representative of the virtues which are common alike to Christian and Greek. And there is a natural tendency to adopt such decoration, and the modes ...
— Val d'Arno • John Ruskin
... with Coleridge, Wordsworth, Walter Wilson, and Manning (principally with Manning) goes on. It is sometimes critical, sometimes jocose. He discusses the merits of various authors, and more than once expresses his extreme distaste for didactic writing. Now, he says, it is too directly instructive. Then he complains that the knowledge, insignificant and vapid as it is, must come in the shape of knowledge. He could not obtain at Newberry's shop any of the old "classics of the Nursery," he says; whilst "Mrs. Barbauld's and Mrs. ...
— Charles Lamb • Barry Cornwall
... attributed to Hesiod. The Iliad, whatever its date, whatever the place of its composition, was intended to please a noble class of warriors. The Hesiodic poems, at least the Theogony, have clearly a didactic aim, and the intention of presenting a systematic and orderly account of the divine genealogies. To neither would we willingly attribute a date much later than the ninth century of our era, but the question of the dates of all the ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... first took coffee as the subject of their verse. Vaniere sang its praises in the eighth book of his Praedium rusticum; and Fellon, a Jesuit professor of Trinity College, Lyons, wrote a didactic poem called, Faba Arabica, Carmen, which is included in the Poemata didascalica ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... reflected that Warde seemed to be saturated with fresh air and all the sweet, clean things which one associates with mountains. "He loves hills," thought John, "and he loves our Hill." Warde began to speak in his jerky, confidential tones. Dirty Dick had always been insufferably dull, pompous, and didactic. ...
— The Hill - A Romance of Friendship • Horace Annesley Vachell
... so genuine that the most imaginative feel its charm. His wisdom is deeper than it seems, so simple, practical, and direct as it is in its application; and his moral teaching more spiritual and penetrating than is apparent on a superficial study. He does not fall into the common error of didactic writers, of laying upon life more than it will bear; but he insists that it shall at least bear the fruits of integrity, truth, honour, justice, self-denial, and brotherly charity. Over and above the mere literary charm of his works, too—and herein, perhaps, lies ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... Orient. Certain well-known facts have been {xvi} deliberately passed over in order to make room for others that are perhaps less known. We have taken liberties with our subject matter that would not be tolerated in a didactic treatise, but to which surely no ...
— The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism • Franz Cumont
... prepares the student to find a Jew among the Castilian troubadours of the fourteenth century, the period of greatest literary activity. The Jewish spirit was by no means antagonistic to the poetry of the Provencal troubadours. In his didactic poem, Chotham Tochnith ("The Seal of Perfection," together with "The Flaming Sword"), Abraham Bedersi, that is, of Beziers (1305), challenges his co-religionists to a poetic combat. He details the rules of the tournament, and it is evident that he is ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... Yriarte (1750-91), a Spanish poet, and keeper of archives in the War Office at Madrid. His two best known works are a didactic poem, entitled La Musica, and the Fables here quoted, which satirize the peculiar foibles of literary men. They have been translated into many languages; into English by Rockliffe (3rd edition, 1866). The fable in question describes how, at a picnic of the ...
— The Art of Literature • Arthur Schopenhauer
... is the only book of a didactic sort written by Mrs. Prentiss. It is not, however, wholly didactic, but contains also touches of narrative and character that add to its interest. Among the topics discussed are: The Bible, Temptation, Faith, Prayer, the Mystics, "The ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... works of art little can be said; their influence is profound and silent, like the influence of nature; they mould by contact; we drink them up like water, and are bettered, yet know not how. It is in books more specifically didactic that we can follow out the effect, and distinguish and weigh and compare. A book which has been very influential upon me fell early into my hands, and so may stand first, though I think its influence was only sensible ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... educational work was undoubtedly his "Great Didactic," or the "Art of Teaching All Things to All Men." It was a thorough and comprehensive treatise on the whole science, method, scope and purpose of universal education. As this book has been recently translated ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... fall into two groups according as they are didactic (technical or gnomic) or genealogical: the first group centres round the "Works and Days", the ...
— Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica • Homer and Hesiod
... joy in her loveliness and could spare no margin of consciousness for critical comment. She was so lovely, so young, so good; so jaded, too, with all the labor, the giving of herself, the long thoughts for others; why shouldn't she be dominant and assured? Why shouldn't she even be didactic and slightly complacent? If there was sometimes a triteness in her pronouncements, a lack of humor, of spontaneity, in her enthusiasms, surely no one who loved her could recognize them with any but the tenderest ...
— A Fountain Sealed • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... orator, but he did not fall into the error of the Roman, in practically valuing eloquence more than the beneficence to which it should be devoted. Like him he was a statesman and magistrate worthy to be called "The second founder of the Republic,"—like him a teacher of didactic philosophy, of morals, and even of his own peculiar art; and like him he made all liberal learning tributary to that noble art, while poetry was the inseparable companion of his genius in its hours of relaxation from the labors of the forum and ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... buy the plate of her serene period, and imitate the dress. To many moral critics in the press, however, Queen Anne is a kind of abomination. I know not how it is, but the terms "Queen Anne furniture and blue china" have become words of almost slanderous railing. Any didactic journalist who uses them is certain at once to fall heavily on the artistic reputation of Mr. Burne Jones, to rebuke the philosophy of Mr. Pater, and to hint that the entrance-hall of the Grosvenor Gallery is that "by-way" with which Bunyan has made us familiar. In the changes of ...
— Oxford • Andrew Lang
... to this day, except Wordsworth's "Excursion," the best purely didactic poem in the English language. The "Sofa" stands only as a point of departure:—it suits a gouty limb; but as the poet is not gouty, he is up and off. He is off for a walk with Mrs. Unwin in the country about Olney. He dwells on the rural sights and rural sounds, ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... be not merely the effect, but also the cause of a deficiency of striking genius in the candidates for the laurel. Collins and Gray were dead; Mason had hung up the lyre; and Thomas Warton was then thought too laboured and quaint; Hayley had succeeded beyond expectation by a return to moral and didactic poetry at a moment when the public was satiated by vile imitations of lyrical and descriptive composition; but Cowper gave a new impulse to the curiosity of poetical readers, by a natural train of thought and the unlaboured effusions of genuine feeling. There is no doubt that a fearful ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins
... that Ennius scientifically inculcated the same irreligion in a didactic poem of his own; and it is evident that he was in earnest with this freethinking. With this trait other features are quite accordant—his political opposition tinged with radicalism, that here and there appears;(46) his singing the praises of the Greek pleasures of the table;(47) above all ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... repeatedly known young men of sensibility converted in a moment to the belief that this was the man they were in search of, the man of men, who could tell them all they should do. His own dealing with them was never affectionate, but superior, didactic,—scorning their petty ways,—very slowly conceding, or not conceding at all, the promise of his society at their houses, or even at his own. "Would he not walk with them?" He did not know. There was nothing so important ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... "Autocrat," "Professor," "Poet," are all studies of life from somewhat different points of view. They are largely made up of sober reflections, and appeared to me to require some lively human interest to save them from wearisome didactic dulness. What could be more natural than that love should find its way among the young people who helped to make up the circle gathered around the table? Nothing is older than the story of young love. Nothing is newer than that same old story. A bit of gilding ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... for which they have a natural craving; to develop a sense of humor, which is really a sense of proportion; to correct certain tendencies by showing the consequences in the career of the hero in the story [Of this motive the children must be quite unconscious and there should be no didactic emphasis]; to present by means of example, not precept, such ideals as will sooner or later be translated into action; and finally, to develop the imagination, which really includes ...
— The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock
... epistles of 1613 prepared under the Advocate's instructions, had been, while the exuberant commentary upon the royal text, delivered in full assembly by his ambassador soon after the reception of the letter, was more than usually didactic, offensive, and ignorant. Sir Dudley never omitted an opportunity of imparting instruction to the States-General as to the nature of their constitution and the essential dogmas on which their Church was founded. It is true that the great lawyers and the great theologians of the country were ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... always held over the minds of men is akin to that of poetry; when the former becomes merely instructive and the latter purely didactic, both lose their power over the imagination. Astronomy is known as the oldest of the sciences, and it will be the longest-lived because it will always have arcana ...
— Curiosities of the Sky • Garrett Serviss
... balm to the injured soul of man. In Cymbeline the mountainous forest and the cave appear in their aspect of obstruction to life's opportunities. These only seem tolerable in comparison with the vicissitudes of fortune in the artificial court life. In As You Like It the forest of Arden is didactic in its lessons. It does not bring peace, but ...
— Creative Unity • Rabindranath Tagore
... would have called a 'haflin callant,' and never became a full-grown and brawny man. Wordsworth was equal to the epic of the age, but has only constructed the great porch leading up to the edifice, and one or two beautiful cottages lying around. Coleridge could have written a poem—whether didactic, or epic, or dramatic—equal in fire and force to the 'Iliad,' or the 'Hamlet,' or the 'De Rerum Natura,' and superior to any of the three in artistic finish and metaphysical truth and religious feeling—a work ranking immediately beside ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... "Ruodlieb." The first is lost; but the other two have been preserved and published.(3) The stories of the Fox and the Bear, and the other animals,—a branch of poetry so peculiar to Germany, and epic rather than didactic in its origin,—attracted the attention of the monks; and it is owing again to their Latin translations that the existence of this curious style of poetry can be traced back so far as the tenth century.(4) As these ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... respect. Surely it is a most potent egg, a gallinaceous Swift. After all, anything but pointless and childless, since it has this strange quality of being offensive and engendering thought. Food for the mind if not food for the body—didactic if not delightful—a bit of modern literature, earnest and fundamentally real. I must try and understand you, Ibsen Ovarum. Possibly it is a profound parable I have stumbled upon. Though I scarcely reckoned on a parable with my bread and butter. Frankly, I must ...
— Select Conversations with an Uncle • H. G. Wells
... moment by those cognizant of the method, and in a position to command the price, of manipulation. As a whited sepulchre it was a conspicuous success, being irreproachably scholarly, dignified, and didactic in tone, ...
— The Lieutenant-Governor • Guy Wetmore Carryl
... distinctions between the great writers, or some of the great writers, of Scott's day; borrowing at the same time a later name. I shall start with that strange figure, Percy Bysshe Shelley. He was too subjective to be merely a descriptive poet, too metaphysical to be vague, and too imaginative to be didactic. As Scott was the most dramatic, Wordsworth the most profound, Byron the most passionate, so Shelley was the most spiritual writer of his time. Scott's poetry was the result of vivid emotion, Wordsworth's ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall
... peninsular writings actually circulated in our country at this time, in translations, he divides into three classes; occasional literature, that is topical tracts and pamphlets on contemporary Spanish affairs; didactic literature, comprising scientific treatises, accounts of voyages such as inspired Hakluyt, works on military science, and, more important still, the religious writings of mystics like Granada; and lastly artistic prose. The last item, which alone concerns ...
— John Lyly • John Dover Wilson
... character we give a specimen in Bk. IV. It is of Syriac origin, undoubtedly introduced into Eastern Turkestan by the early Nestorian missions, probably in the 8th or 9th century. The oldest known example of this character so applied, the Kudatku Bilik, a didactic poem in Uighur (a branch of Oriental Turkish), dating from A.D. 1069, was published by Prof. Vambery in 1870. A new edition of the Kudatku Bilik was published at St. Petersburg, in 1891, by Dr. W. Radloff. Vambery had a pleasing illustration ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... way, never mind whose heart breaks for it," said my wife next morning, at breakfast, in that half-didactic, half-reproachful way of hers, which is harder to bear than her most energetic assault. Holofernes, too, is with her a pet name for any fell domestic despot. So, whenever, against her most ambitious innovations, those which ...
— I and My Chimney • Herman Melville
... critic, however anxious to observe the purely literary aspect, is constantly tempted to diverge into the political or theological theories suggested. The 'trilogy' was composed after Disraeli had become a force in politics, and the didactic tendency is constantly obtruding itself. In the period between 'Vivian Grey' (1826-7) and 'Coningsby' (1844) he had published several novels in which the prophet is lost, or nearly lost, in the artist. ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... [im nuanciren]," says Mikuli, "he was exceedingly particular about a gradual increase and decrease of loudness." Karasowski writes: "Exaggeration in accentuation was hateful to him, for, in his opinion, it took away the poesy from playing, and gave it a certain didactic pedantry."] ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... affirming that it is so, we may at least ask the question. If other poets of our time show more intellectual strength than he, are they, perchance, given sometimes to adulterating their poetry with ratiocination and didactic preachments such as were better left to the proseman? Without affirming that it is so, we may at least ask the question. If other poets of our time can reach a finer frenzy than he and give it voice with a more melodious throat, are they, perchance, apt to forget that “eloquence is ...
— Old Familiar Faces • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... The Observer complaining bitterly of the state of the morass leading to the Aerodrome at Hendon. This gentleman does not realise that there is a didactic purpose in the cause of his annoyance. Learn to fly and you ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 8, 1914 • Various
... ever; occupied continually with all manner of Poetic interests. Coeur-de-Lion, a new and more elaborate attempt in the mock-heroic or comico-didactic vein, had been on hand for some time, the scope of it greatly deepening and expanding itself since it first took hold of him; and now, soon after the Naples journey, it rose into shape on the wider plan; shaken up probably by this new excitement, ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... spherical—which was unusual, but not remarkable. The radar gave him the distance from the surface of the asteroid, and he measured the diameter and punched it through the calculator. "Observe," he said in a dry, didactic voice. "The diameter is on the order of five times ten to the fourteenth micromicrons." He kept punching at the calculator. "If we assume a mean density of two point six six times ten to the minus thirty-sixth metric tons per cubic micromicron, we attain a mean mass of some one ...
— Anchorite • Randall Garrett
... the grandfather of Charles Darwin, was born in 1731, or twenty-four years after Buffon. He was an English country physician with a large practice, and not only interested in philosophy, mechanics, and natural science, but given to didactic rhyming, as evinced by The Botanical Garden and The Loves of the Plants, the latter of which was translated into French in 1800, and into Italian in 1805. His "shrewd and homely mind," his powers of keen observation ...
— Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution - His Life and Work • Alpheus Spring Packard
... rather enhances than diminishes its general value. Renan found reason for pronouncing it "the most important book of Christendom— the most important book which has ever been written." Its aim is manifestly didactic ...
— Weymouth New Testament in Modern Speech, Preface and Introductions - Third Edition 1913 • R F Weymouth
... ten go with his father, aware that at the best she must bear months of silence, knowing that they may perish at sea or fall into the hands of privateers; but she writes with indomitable cheer, sending the lad tender letters of good advice, a little didactic to modern taste, but throbbing with affection. "Dear as you are to me," says this tender mother, "I would much rather you should have found your grave in the ocean you have crossed than see you an immoral, ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... drew nearer she was whimsically struck by a kind of family likeness between Miss Van Osburgh and Percy Gryce. There was no resemblance of feature. Gryce was handsome in a didactic way—he looked like a clever pupil's drawing from a plaster-cast—while Gwen's countenance had no more modelling than a face painted on a toy balloon. But the deeper affinity was unmistakable: the two had the same prejudices and ideals, and the ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... feuilletoniste, but in his slipping into the manner and his adopting the artifices that he blamed so unsparingly in Eugene Sue and Alexandre Dumas. Not to speak of his falling off in accurate observation, he inserted more and more padding in his fiction; the aridly didactic encroached upon the artist's creation; and, to make the arid portions go down with his readers, he spiced them with exciting episodes and all the stage tricks common in the serial story. To tell the truth, he had never quite shaken off his juvenile manner of the Heiress of Birague, which reasserted ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... in his collection of English and American poetry are also fine, and may be said to deserve their place. Her criticism was better than is usually the case with poets; and her conversation about authors and literature always interesting. It was not didactic at all, but frank, spontaneous and open to correction. She liked the most diverse writers; Tennyson, and Dickens, and Browning. In early years I remember her speaking of Hawthorne in a tone of veneration; but later in ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns
... that "Moses was skilled in all the knowledge of the Egyptians." He must therefore have been familiar not only with the ancient poems and sacred writings, but also with the scientific, historical, legal and didactic literature of the times, from which, no doubt, he borrowed all that was best in the Mosaic Code that he drew up for the Chosen People of God. This old literature Moses confirmed and purified, even as Christ at a later period, confirmed and elevated ...
— The Interdependence of Literature • Georgina Pell Curtis
... widely known for many years for the various series of moral and didactic pictures which he was fond of painting. Perhaps the most famous of these was his "Voyage of Life," showing infancy, youth, manhood, and old age floating down the stream of time. The taste of the period approved them, and they were especially popular for ...
— American Men of Mind • Burton E. Stevenson
... as certain and near he here represented in such colours as had, in his lonely musings, soothed his soul to peace. The versification sustains the solemn spirit which breathes throughout: it is peculiarly melodious. The poem ought rather to be considered didactic than narrative: it was the outpouring of his own emotions, embodied in the purest form he could conceive, painted in the ideal hues which his brilliant imagination inspired, and softened by ...
— Notes to the Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley • Mary W. Shelley
... This volume is designed, therefore, to portray in some degree their influence in the struggle of the Colonies to attain their independence. The narration of events takes the form of a story—a slight thread of romance being employed, rather than didactic narrative, to more vividly picture the scenes and the parts performed by the actors in the great historic drama. It will not be difficult for the reader to discern between the facts of history and the imaginative parts ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin
... know—unless from a general sense of helplessness in Holland, and a craving for any kind of companionship. Now I have got him, I feel rather more helpless than ever—a sort of composite of Sandford and Merton, with a didactic, but frequently incomprehensible Dutch Barlow. My Sandford half would like to exhibit an intelligent curiosity, but is generally suppressed by Merton, who has a morbid horror of useful information. Not that BOSCH is remarkably ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, June 18, 1892 • Various
... book," though jointly purchased by the Basins from a travelling salesman, as a highly illuminated volume, promising much of a lively nature, had turned out to be to an altogether unexpected degree serious and didactic. ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... of the church, Hildebrand, figures as the hero. The Germans have never succeeded in the historical novel. With vast resources in materiel, they have always a vagueness, a want of definite interest, of picturesque arrangement, and of sustained and disciplined power. Schefer is a scholar, and his didactic purpose is plain enough, and well enough managed. The Teutonic character has always instinctively revolted against the practice of celibacy, a form of ascetism quite natural, and sometimes perhaps inevitable, as a reaction against the unbridled sensualism of the Africans and Asiatics, but quite out ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... these hints, often, I fear, too didactic and abrupt, upon the full use of one's time to the great end of living (as distinguished from vegetating) without briefly referring to certain dangers which lie in wait for the sincere aspirant towards life. The first is the terrible danger of becoming that most odious and least supportable ...
— How to Live on 24 Hours a Day • Arnold Bennett
... this, because the defects of this romancer are the besetting sins of certain of our own novelists, who had at one time a fair degree of transient popularity. A lack of skill in the creation or accurate delineation of individual character, which, instead of representing men and women, are didactic exhibitions of the author himself, projected into various personages, and all bearing an unmistakable family resemblance—this it is that is at the bottom of the sudden decadence into which the writings of one ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... fallen into his old didactic and dogmatic habit of speech, and perhaps, under the spur of Zenobia's eyes, he had given it some natural emphasis. A dead silence followed, in which the others regarded him with amused and gratified surprise, and it was ...
— Snow-Bound at Eagle's • Bret Harte
... the sovereign of Castile. His fate furnishes one of the most memorable lessons in history. It was not lost on his contemporaries; and the marquis of Santillana has made use of it to point the moral of perhaps the most pleasing of his didactic compositions. [41] John did not long survive his favorite's death, which he was seen afterwards to lament even with tears. Indeed, during the whole of the trial he had exhibited the most pitiable agitation, having twice issued ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... empty. And perhaps we are right. As to conversation, there is no use in sending the bucket into the well when the well is dry—it only makes a rattling of windlass and chain. We do not wish to be understood to be an enemy of the light traffic of human speech. Deliver us from the didactic and the everlastingly improving style of thing! Conversation, in order to be good, and intellectually inspiring, and spiritually restful, need not always be serious. It must be alert and intelligent, and mean more by its suggestions and allusions than is said. There is the ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... himself describes it simply as "A Mask"; by others it has been criticised and estimated as a lyrical drama, a drama in the epic style, a lyric poem in the form of a play, a phantasy, an allegory, a philosophical poem, a suite of speeches or majestic soliloquies, and even a didactic poem. Such variety in the description of the poem is explained partly by its complex charm and many-sided interest, and partly by the desire to describe it from that point of view which should best reconcile its literary form with what we know of the genius and ...
— Milton's Comus • John Milton
... which the latter indulged in unsympathetic deceptions or even in practical jokes. The objection, however, is not only false, but very much the reverse of the facts. The fairy-tales are at root not only moral in the sense of being innocent, but moral in the sense of being didactic, moral in the sense of being moralising. It is all very well to talk of the freedom of fairyland, but there was precious little freedom in fairyland by the best official accounts. Mr. W.B. Yeats and other sensitive modern ...
— All Things Considered • G. K. Chesterton
... ideas of beauty are. He will indicate the particular female toad he happens to admire and praise her goggle-eyes and yellow belly as the perfection of beauty!” A negro from Guiana will make much the same unsatisfactory answer, so the old philosopher recommends us not to be didactic on subjects where judgments are relative, and at the same ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... and do likewise" sounds in the child's heart, and a new throb of tenderness and aspiration, of desire to do, to grow, and to be, stirs gently there and wakes the soul to higher ideals. In such a story the canting, vapid, or didactic little moral, tacked like a tag on the end, for fear we shall not read the lesson aright, is nothing short of an insult to the better feelings. It used to be very much in vogue, but we have learned better nowadays, and we ...
— The Story Hour • Nora A. Smith and Kate Douglas Wiggin
... more popular forms than even those of the poems of Chaucer. The older fashions of instructing the people were still in vogue in the early part of Edward's reign. Richard Rolle, the hermit of Hampole, whose Prick of Conscience and vernacular paraphrases of the Bible illustrate the older didactic literature, was carried off in his Yorkshire cell in the year of the Black Death. The cycles of miracle plays, which edified and amused the townsfolk of Chester and York, crystallised into a permanent shape early in this reign, and were set forth with ever-increasing ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... currente calamo for the mere pastime of author and readers, without aiming to inculcate some regenerative principle, or to photograph some valuable phase of protean truth, was in her estimation ignoble; for her high standard demanded that all books should be to a certain extent didactic, wandering like evangels among the people, and making some man, woman, or child happier, or wiser, or better—more patient or more hopeful—by their utterances. Believing that every earnest author's mind ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... scene was laid in India, and which contained evidence of this ill-treatment of the Hindoos by their white masters. Kingsley spoke highly of this book. I said I thought it had hardly been appreciated in England. Kingsley thought the reason was it was too didactic—there was too much moralizing. Only the few could appreciate this: the many did not care for it in ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... have a record in the elegies of Theognis, in which the poet has embodied, for the benefit of Kurnus his friend, the ripe experience of an eventful life. The poems for the most part are didactic in character, consciously and deliberately aimed at the instruction and guidance of the man to whom they are addressed; but every now and again the passion breaks through which informs and inspires ...
— The Greek View of Life • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... creature into a lackadaisical young lady; though, as she tried her very best to do so, none ought to blame her because she failed of success. All her stock of novels she lent to Laura, who read them, every one, in secret, skipping only the dull and didactic pages. That she was not spoiled by this experiment was due less to the strength of Laura's understanding than to the liveliness of her temper, which, in this strait, stood her in very good stead of more solid qualities ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... (HEINEMANN) brings Mr. EDEN PHILLPOTTS back to Devonshire, and I wave my little flag to welcome him. Of late he has sometimes been a shade too didactic for my liking, but here he gives us yet another plain tale of his beloved moor, and he is instructive only in showing the danger of too much money—a danger at which most of us can in these days afford to smile. The ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 31, 1920 • Various
... for literature. With the story of the small boy who stole a pin, repented of and confessed that crime, and then became a good and great man, I was as familiar as if I myself had invented that ingenious and instructive tale; I could lisp the moral numbers of Watts and the didactic hymns of Wesley, and the annual reports of the American Tract Society had already revealed to me the sphere of usefulness in which my grandmother hoped I would ultimately figure with discretion and zeal. And yet my heart was free; wholly untouched of that gentle yet ...
— The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac • Eugene Field
... entitled treatises of Linguistic have a merely didactic purpose; they are simply scholastic manuals. We find in them, in truth, a little of everything, from the description of the vocal apparatus and of the artificial machines (phonographs) which can imitate it, to ...
— Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic • Benedetto Croce
... of nearly all her tales were used to convey an admonition or to proclaim the value of the story as a "warning to the youth of both sexes." To modern readers these pieces seem less successful illustrations of fiction made didactic, than of didacticism dissolved and quite forgot in fiction, but Sterling and other eulogists strenuously supported the novelist's claim to moral usefulness.[24] The pill of improvement supposed to ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... in other books. Here again the problem lies in getting the pupil to see the method apart from its content, and to show him that it really brings results that are worth while. If, in our training in the topical method, we are too formal and didactic, the art of study will begin and end right there. It is here that the factor of motivation is of supreme importance. When real problems are raised which require for their solution intelligent reading, the general worth of the method of study can be clearly ...
— Craftsmanship in Teaching • William Chandler Bagley
... the reader expect to find perfection of form, pure art, in its often monotonous lyric poetry, or its prolix, didactic novels. The authors of the ghetto felt too much, suffered too much, were too much under the dominance of a life of misery, a semi-Asiatic, semi-mediaeval regime, to have had heart for the cultivation ...
— The Renascence of Hebrew Literature (1743-1885) • Nahum Slouschz
... did not catch them, nor, I'm afraid, did Nina,' said Dick. 'Look there! I'll be shot if she's not giving your friend the major a lesson! When she performs in that way with her hands, you may swear she is didactic.' ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... containing Joshua, Judges with Ruth, Samuel, Kings, Isaiah, Jeremiah with Lamentations, Ezekiel and the twelve minor prophets. It was not completed prior to 300 B.C., because the book of Jonah was not written before. This work may be called a historical parable composed for a didactic purpose, giving a milder, larger view of Jehovah's favor than the orthodox one, that excluded the Gentiles. Ruth, containing an idyllic story with an unfinished genealogy attached, meant to glorify the house of David, and presenting a kindred ...
— The Canon of the Bible • Samuel Davidson
... upon your subject, you must next consider the tone, or manner, of your narration. There is the tone didactic, the tone enthusiastic, the tone natural—all common—place enough. But then there is the tone laconic, or curt, which has lately come much into use. It consists in short sentences. Somehow thus: Can't be too brief. Can't be too snappish. Always a full stop. And never ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... Aramis, "your opinion will be very valuable. The question is this: Monsieur the Principal thinks that my thesis ought to be dogmatic and didactic." ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... hand into his waistcoat, and in his most didactic of tones).—"From a remote period, the choice of a title has perplexed the scribbling portion of mankind. We may guess how their invention has been racked by the strange contortions it has produced. To begin with the Hebrews. 'The Lips of the Sleeping' (Labia Dormientium)—what ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... intensity of admiration with which I read it. It seemed to me, as I told my nieces, that our English fiction writers had better shut up altogether and have done with it, for one will have no patience with any but didactic writing after yours. My nieces (and you may have heard that Maria, my nurse, is very, very clever) are thoroughly possessed with the book, and Maria says she feels as if a fresh department of human life had been opened to her since this day ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... and a more directly successful appeal to the public, were, somewhat later, the characteristics of Perez y Galdos, whose vigorous novels, spoiled a little for a foreign reader by their didactic diffuseness, are well-known in this country. In the hands of Galdos, a further step was taken by Spanish fiction towards the rejection of romantic optimism and the adoption of a modified realism. In Pereda, so the Spanish ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... consider questions dependent upon varying considerations. As to the right or wrong wording of a clause in the Factory Amendment Act, he could be lucid, explanatory and convincing; as to the justice of the same clause when compared with other forms of legislation, he was vague and unconvincing, didactic and prejudiced. If Dartrey's object had been to bring these two men into closer understanding of each other, he was certainly succeeding. It is doubtful, however, whether the understanding progressed entirely in the fashion he had desired. Nora, curled up in an easy-chair, affecting ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... necessarily didactic and assertive for it is impossible to prove or disprove any of these postulates. It is for that reason, and the lack of time that I cite no instances. They would be merely illustrative and not probative, for the human intellect is ...
— The Inhumanity of Socialism • Edward F. Adams
... scientific ideas, collect and edit them fairly, and, in this way, preserve them for the world! For, unfortunately, you yourself will always be putting off this business, because, as I think, what is actually didactic is not a part of your nature. You are, in reality, very well qualified for being appropriated and plundered by others during your own lifetime, as has already happened to you several times and would happen ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... something about Columbus and Galileo, who made men accept sundry truths in the teeth of clerical opposition; and, as before, we float gently down the current of history without being over well-informed as to the precise didactic purpose of our voyage. Here, indeed, even our headings and running-titles do not materially help us, for though we are supposed to be witnessing, or mayhap assisting in, a perennial conflict between "science" and "religion," we are nowhere enlightened as to what ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... author of a little library of writings on Italian art, was likewise of our company occasionally; and she evinced a marked liking for my father, which was remarkable, inasmuch as he was able to keep no sort of pace with her in her didactic homilies, which were delivered with a tranquil, ex-cathedra manner, befitting one who was the authority on her subject; one would no more have thought of questioning her verdicts than those of Ruskin; but I should have liked to see the latter and ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... well-meant and true words flew wide of their mark, for two reasons. They were chillingly didactic, and it is vinegar upon nitre to stand over an agonised soul and preach platitudes in an unsympathetic voice. And they assumed unusual sin in Job as the explanation of his unparalleled pains, while the prologue tells us that his sufferings were ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren |
