"Erudition" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... against what I say, if you find everything in my sayings is not exactly new. You can't possibly mistake a man who means to be honest for a literary pickpocket. I once read an introductory lecture that looked to me too learned for its latitude. On examination, I found all its erudition was taken ready-made from D'Israeli. If I had been ill-natured, I should have shown up the Professor, who had once belabored me in his feeble way, but one can generally tell these wholesale thieves easily enough, and they are not worth the trouble of putting them in the pillory. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... consequence of which an abundance of pretenders to learning of this sort resorted to the palace from all quarters, men who wore their palliums and were more conspicuous for their costume than for their erudition. These impostors, who invariably adopted the religious sentiments of their prince, were inimical to the welfare of the Christians; but since Julian himself was overcome by excessive vanity he derided all ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... a week in the diluted bath. Princess Ligovski is apparently unaccustomed to giving orders. She cherishes respect for the intelligence and attainments of her daughter, who has read Byron in English and knows algebra: in Moscow, evidently, the ladies have entered upon the paths of erudition—and a good thing, too! The men here are generally so unamiable, that, for a clever woman, it must be intolerable to flirt with them. Princess Ligovski is very fond of young people; Princess Mary looks on them with a certain contempt—a Moscow habit! In Moscow ...
— A Hero of Our Time • M. Y. Lermontov
... Divine states, "is a learned work, or a large corpus of erudition; it contains manifold learning in all sciences; it teaches the most explicit and most complete, civil and canonical law of the Jews, so that the whole nation, as well as their Synagogue, might live thereby in a state of happiness,—in the ...
— Diaries of Sir Moses and Lady Montefiore, Volume I • Sir Moses Montefiore
... easily be derived. Some of his plays have suffered severely from the ravages of time, the ignorance of copyists, and the more dangerous officiousness of grammarians. Some passages of the Bacchae, Rhesus, Troades, and the two Iphigenias, despite the ingenuity and erudition of such scholars as Porson, Elmsley, Monk, Burges, and a host of others, must still remain mere matter for guessing. Hermann's Euripides is, as a whole, sadly unworthy the abilities of the Humboldt ...
— The Tragedies of Euripides, Volume I. • Euripides
... established in Peru and it came to pass that a certain Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa, a Spanish officer of unusual erudition in maritime and other matters, having collected and translated many historical documents, or guipus,* relating to the Incas, became aware that one of them, their wisest and greatest monarch, named Tupac Yupanqui, had made an extensive voyage by sea towards the setting sun, which lasted ...
— The First Discovery of Australia and New Guinea • George Collingridge
... hovering on the door-step when we emerged, I inferred that Mrs. Amyot, at that period, did not often walk home alone; but I doubt whether any of my discomfited rivals, whatever his claims to favor, was ever treated to so ravishing a mixture of shyness and self-abandonment, of sham erudition and real teeth and hair, as it was my privilege to enjoy. Even at the opening of her public career Mrs. Amyot had a tender eye for strangers, as possible links with successive centres of culture to which in due course the torch of Greek art ...
— The Greater Inclination • Edith Wharton
... the history of modern science. No previous writer has treated the subject from this point of view, and the present monograph will be found to possess no less originality of conception than vigor of reasoning and wealth of erudition."—New York Tribune. ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... to the honor of learning that men of business should know erudition is not like a lark, which flies high, and delights in nothing but singing; but that 't is rather like a hawk, which soars aloft indeed, but can stoop when she finds it convenient, and seize ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... peer also possessed a curious felicity for applying quotation; and nothing rejoiced him so much as when, in the same phrase, he was enabled to set the two jewels of his courtliness of flattery and his profundity of erudition. Unhappily enough, his compliments were seldom as well taken as they were meant; and, whether from the ingratitude of the persons complimented or the ill fortune of the noble adulator, seemed sometimes to produce indignation in place of delight. It has been said that his civilities had cost Lord ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... there is a new vein of popularity. Since we left the primary poetry we have been on the track of a literature whose spring was in book-learning. A foreign erudition had thrown the lore of the native minstrel into the shade. But some relics of domestic material reappear with the new gush of popular song in the 13th century. Among the mass of stories which fill that time, we find here and there ...
— Anglo-Saxon Literature • John Earle
... studying it to add to them the Henry the Seventh, which is a model of clear historical narration, not exactly picturesque, but never dull; and though not exactly erudite, yet by no means wanting in erudition, and exhibiting conclusions which, after two centuries and a half of record-grubbing, have not been seriously impugned or greatly altered by any modern historian. In this book, which was written late, Bacon had, of course, the advantage of ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... days. The people of the house, instead of bringing me a quiet peasant, officiously delivered me up to a professed antiquary, one of those diligent plausible young men, to whom, God help me! I have so capital an aversion. This sweet spark displayed all his little erudition, and flourished away upon cloacas and vomitoriums with eternal fluency. He was very profound in the doctrine of conduits, and knew to admiration how the filthiness of all the amphitheatre was disposed of; but perceiving my inattention, and having ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford
... accumulation of a great quantity of information, some not entirely inadequate or incorrect general standards of taste and criticism will have been arrived at. It is worth remembering that at least one eminently competent English critic has declared that while there may be less erudition in America, ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... Capital," 1825, and "The Natural and Artificial Right of Property Contrasted," 1832. The former, which Marx calls "an admirable work," is only a small tract of thirty-four pages, but its influence in England and America was very great. Hodgskin was a man of great culture and erudition, with a genius for popular writing upon difficult topics. It is interesting to know that in a letter to his friend, Francis Place, he sketched a book which he proposed writing, "curiously like Marx's 'Capital,'" according to ...
— Socialism - A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles • John Spargo
... four or five Latin proverbs at his command. He knew the Greek alphabet, had picked up a bit of Hindostani on Indian service, and a little bit of French and Turkish in the Crimea. All these he aired upon me in a very natural manner, and I was much impressed with his erudition, until a grinning depot man got me into a corner and told me that 'the sergeant had shown me the whole bag o' thricks at wonst,' He paid every well-dressed recruit that compliment, it seemed; and the depot man warned me that ...
— The Making Of A Novelist - An Experiment In Autobiography • David Christie Murray
... possible among the things they ought to learn. They thus assimilate the object of instruction, which becomes a living and useful part of their personality, instead of becoming encysted in the brain in the form of dead erudition like a foreign body, and filling it with formulae learnt by heart. Such formulae are ill-understood by children, and later on it is difficult for them to clear their brains of this indigestible rubbish to make room for the realities of ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... to the third or fourth century B.C., when the language, having been progressively refined, became fixed in the writings of Kalidasa, Jayadeva, and other poets. A fourth period, including the tenth century A.D., may be added, distinguished by its erudition, grammatical, rhetorical, and scientific disquisitions, which, however, is not considered as belonging to the classical age. From the Hindu languages, originating in the Sanskrit, new literatures have sprung; but they are essentially founded on the ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... guardians of the Church." [348:3] Hippolytus testifies that Callistus was afraid of him, [348:4] and if both were members of the same synod, [348:5] well might the heterodox prelate stand in awe of a minister who possessed co-ordinate authority, with greater honesty and superior erudition. But still, it is abundantly plain, from the admissions of the "Philosophumena," that the bishop of Rome, in the time of the author of this treatise, was beginning to presume upon his position. Hippolytus complains of his ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... up the steps, crossed the hall-way, and passed in beneath the dome of the reading-room, he wondered if, amid those mountains of erudition surrounding him, there was any wisdom so strange, and so awful, as that ...
— Brood of the Witch-Queen • Sax Rohmer
... however, among these fifty men and women one true and sublime poet,—the dying "Grammarian," who applies the alchemy of a lofty imagination to the dry business of verbal erudition. ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... deter me from carrying out the fixed purpose of my mind. And could I, furthermore, confront the morning breeze, the evening moon, the willows by the steps and the flowers in the courtyard, methinks these would moisten to a greater degree my mortal pen with ink; but though I lack culture and erudition, what harm is there, however, in employing fiction and unrecondite language to give utterance to the merits of these characters? And were I also able to induce the inmates of the inner chamber to understand and diffuse them, could ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... a college education, but something—as it eventuated—vastly better. His father had a brother, a man of erudition for his time, who had studied for the Church. This learned uncle, Georgio Antonio Vespucci, was then a Dominican friar, respected in Florence for his piety and for his learning. About the year 1450, or not long before Amerigo was born, he opened a school for the ...
— Amerigo Vespucci • Frederick A. Ober
... masculine strength and breadth of understanding; the same taste for the beautiful in poetry, in art, and in nature, joined to similar fondness for metaphysical studies; the same delight in books of devotion and in books of theology; and the same varied erudition. Only one of them seems to have been an accomplished Hebraist, but both were good Latin and Greek scholars; and both were familiar with Italian, Spanish, French, and German. Even in Sara Coleridge's admiration ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... his polemical powers completed James's happiness, which the triumph of exhibiting his erudition had already ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... is a historical novel of the thirteenth century, written frankly in imitation of Walter Scott's Waverley Novels. The romance contains many tiresome descriptions of scenery, and drags along tediously as most old-fashioned novels did. But Espronceda had none of Sir Walter's archaeological erudition, none of his ability to seize the characteristics of an epoch, and above all none of his skill as a creator of interesting characters. The personages in "Sancho Saldaa" fail to interest. The most that can be said of the work is that among the ...
— El Estudiante de Salamanca and Other Selections • George Tyler Northup
... himself, consciously or unconsciously, on Lord Palmerston, and in the course of conversation one gathered that he was on terms of intimacy with the chiefs of the Liberal party, such as Lord Granville and Lord Hartington, and if the listener was credited with any erudition, allusion was made to the most celebrated artists and authors, and to their works. There was a celebrated Boucher in Dungory Castle, which Milord, it was hinted, had bought for some very small sum many years ago on the Continent; there was also a cabinet by Buhl and a statue ...
— Muslin • George Moore
... with his novels, they are insignificant enough. But even the worst work of such a man is notable in its way; and Fielding's contributions to the Journal are by no means to be despised. They are shrewd lay sermons, often exhibiting much out-of-the-way erudition, and nearly always distinguished by some of his personal qualities. In No. 33, on "Profanity," there is a character- sketch which, for vigour and vitality, is worthy of his best days; and there is also a very thoughtful paper on "Reading," containing a kindly reference to "the ingenious Author ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... dictated by good judgment. Therefore her girls usually found as much fault as other boarding school girls are prone to do, and with somewhat more reason. On the other hand, no one could question the principal's erudition or her skill in imparting ...
— Mary Louise • Edith van Dyne (one of L. Frank Baum's pen names)
... from the pedantry of knowledge and the pedantry of opinion, that it is impossible for him to rouse in other minds any of the antipathy which is often felt for powerful individualities whose powers of mind and extent of erudition still enforce respect and extort admiration. The instinctive sympathy he thus creates is due to no lack of intrepidity in expressing his love for what is right and his hatred for what is wrong. No historian is more decisive in his judgments, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... "Picture of New York." Mitchill began with the aborigines: the Irvings began with the creation of the world. Fortunately Peter was soon called away to Europe, and Irving was left to his own devices, which presently took a different and more original turn. He threw out most of the pompous erudition which belonged to the work as a burlesque, and condensed what remained. Everything after the five ...
— Washington Irving • Henry W. Boynton
... conclusions, are rather strained and distorted, and ought to be expressed in a less stringent and narrow manner, yet great stress is to be laid on the opinions of those men who have a peculiarly bold and manly turn of thought and sentiment. For our friends the Peripatetics, notwithstanding all their erudition, gravity, and fluency of language, do not satisfy me about the moderation of these disorders and diseases of the soul which they insist upon; for every evil, though moderate, is in its nature great. ...
— The Academic Questions • M. T. Cicero
... time is passed in reading novels, of which she has a most extensive library, and has a constant supply from the publishers in town. Her erudition in this line of literature is immense; she has kept pace with the press for half a century. Her mind is stuffed with love-tales of all kinds, from the stately amours of the old books of chivalry, down to the last blue-covered romance, reeking from the press; though she evidently gives ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... really never conies to grips with his opponents, and his large volumes shine rather in erudition and style than in method and system. Anyone who attempts a reply must necessarily follow Mr. Max Muller up and down, collecting his scattered remarks on this or that point at issue. Hence my reply, much against my will, must seem desultory and rambling. ...
— Modern Mythology • Andrew Lang
... quotations, which he always commended to their attention as "the immediate language of the Holy Ghost"—a practice which exposed his successor, himself a learned man, to the complaint of his rustic parishioners, that for all his erudition no "immediate language of the Holy Ghost" was ever to be heard from him. On the whole the Rev. John Coleridge appears to have been a gentle and kindly eccentric, whose combination of qualities may have well entitled him to be compared, as his famous son was wont in after- ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... told by Philip Trajetta,[A] that 'if counterpoint be not a science, neither is astronomy.' For want of proper expounders, this truth has made but little impression, and, while the Art of Music has advanced considerably among us, the Science has remained nearly stationary. In Europe, erudition, research, and collections of rules have not been wanting. Much has been accomplished, but an exhaustive work, based upon the simple laws of nature, has (so far as the writer can learn) never yet appeared. The profoundly learned and truly great Bohemian musician, W. J. Tomaschek, who ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... terror, with all its faults, had seldom been guilty of demanding intellectual strain or of overburdening itself with erudition. It was the dignified task of Lord Lytton to rationalise and elevate the novel of terror, to evolve the "man of reason" from the "child of nature." Although time has tarnished the brilliance of his reputation, George Edward Bulwer ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... toward Anton, and led him on to talk about his friend. She listened to every word with warm sympathy, and well knew what to ask and how to comfort. It was a relief to Anton to speak of the departed one, to describe his quiet way of life, his erudition, his poetical enthusiasm. After a pause, Sabine looked up frankly into his face, and asked, "Have you any ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... some little misgivings as to the solid benefit to be derived from such fantastic erudition, and timidly consulted ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... bumpy page crackles faintly; the big irregular print meets the eye with a pleasant and leisurely mellowness. But what do they tell one? Very little, alas! that one need know, very much which it would be a positive mistake to believe. That is the worst of erudition—that the next scholar sucks the few drops of honey that you have accumulated, sets right your blunders, and you are superseded. You have handed on the torch, perhaps, and even trimmed it. Your errors, your patient explanations, ...
— From a College Window • Arthur Christopher Benson
... monks rendered was the cultivation of learning and knowledge. With wonderful assiduity they poured forth works of erudition, of history, of criticism, recorded the annals of their own times, and stored these priceless records in their libraries, which have done such good service to the historians of modern times. The monasteries absorbed nearly all the social and intellectual movement ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield
... of book reading, including, in fact, every known author on every one of a wide circle of subjects. This was characteristic of the man: he was a voracious reader himself, and an example to show, in opposition to Hobbes, that original genius is not necessarily quenched by great or even excessive erudition. As bearing on the art of study, especially for striplings under twenty, Milton's scheme is open to two criticisms: first, that the amount of reading on the whole is too great; second, that in subjects handled ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain
... he some commutation broach, I'll pledge my aith in guid braid Scotch, He need na fear their foul reproach Nor erudition, Yon ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... deals with the life of Saint Dodekanus the Italian had displayed more than his usual erudition and acumen. He had sifted the records with such incredible diligence that little was left for the pen of an annotator, save words of praise. In two small matters, however, the Englishman, considerably to his regret, was enabled or rather ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... Bacon; it is this which wreathes a new fascination around the royal brow of Raleigh; it is this, in part, which makes light the bulky and antiquated tomes of Hakluyt; and the grace of it is that which we often miss in coming from ancient to modern literature. Better it is, too, than much erudition and many "proprieties" of thought; and one may note it as curious, that Mr. Buckle, seeking to disparage imagination, should have written a book whose most winning and enduring charm is the appeal to imagination it makes. Moreover, he is an enthusiast in behalf of just ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... the book is too polemical. Both books partake of the poetry, if not the confusion, of the subject; but not for a world of dust would one clip their wings of fancy and suggestion. Indeed, their union of scholarship and poetry is unique. When the pains of erudition fail to track a fact to its lair, they do not scruple to use the divining rod; and the result often passes out of the realm of pedestrian chronicle into the world ...
— The Builders - A Story and Study of Masonry • Joseph Fort Newton
... in the universities of Scotland cannot be expected to be often decorated with the splendours of ornamental erudition, but they obtain a mediocrity of knowledge, between learning and ignorance, not inadequate to the purposes of common life, which is, I believe, very widely diffused among them, and which countenanced in general by a national combination so invidious, that their friends cannot defend it, and actuated ...
— A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland • Samuel Johnson
... every undeserving American who can have the erudition and divination of the Genius Loci in answer to his unuttered prayer during a visit to even a small part of the Roman Forum. But failing the company of the Commendatore Boni, which is without price, there are to be had for a very little money the guidance and philosophy, and, for all I know, ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... should represent all phases of art through their several stages of progress and decay, meeting all wants and tastes, so criticism should be based upon a foundation equally broad,—not proud of its erudition nor dictatorial, but with due humility uttering its opinions, prompt to sustain them, and yet ever ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... accurate chronological system can best repair what is deficient, and best elucidate what is obscure in the scanty authorities bequeathed to us, all the light of a profound and disciplined intellect, applying the acutest comprehension to the richest erudition, and arriving at its conclusions according to the true spirit of inductive reasoning, which proportions the completeness of the final discovery to the caution of the intermediate process. My obligations ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... long list of flowers so incongruously massed about the gnat's grave and in the two hundred lines that detail the ghostly census of Hades? If this is a parody at all, it is to remind Octavius of Epidian erudition. In any case it is a kind of prompter of the poetic allusions that occupied the boys' hours at school. The simple plot of the shepherd and the gnat was selected from the type of fable lore thought suitable for school-room reading. It served by its very incongruity as a ...
— Vergil - A Biography • Tenney Frank
... to keep our countenance when we take up the palaver about Sidonia and the Chosen Race. The Novels by Eminent Hands are all good: they are much more than parodies; they are real criticism, sound, wise, genial, and instructive. Nor are they in the least unfair. If the balderdash and cheap erudition of Bulwer and Disraeli are covered with inextinguishable mirth, no one is offended by the pleasant imitations of Lever, James, ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... humorous, if extravagantly idealized, figure of Mr. Shandy takes bodily shape and consistency before our eyes. It is a mistake, I think, of Sir Walter Scott's to regard the portrait of this eccentric philosopher as intended for a satire upon perverted and deranged erudition—as the study of a man "whom too much and too miscellaneous learning had brought within a step or two of madness." Sterne's conception seems to me a little more subtle and less commonplace than that. Mr. Shandy, ...
— Sterne • H.D. Traill
... mental mistiness, is not very unusual in ghost seers. The brother of a friend of my own, a man of letters and wide erudition, was, as a boy, employed in a shop in a town, say Wexington. The overseer was a dark, rather hectic-looking man, who died. Some months afterwards the boy was sent on an errand. He did his business, but, like a boy, returned by a ...
— The Book of Dreams and Ghosts • Andrew Lang
... refrained from discussing such matters at all. One finds, indeed, a sort of general conspiracy, infinitely alert and jealous, against the publication of the esoteric wisdom of the sex, and even against the acknowledgment that any such body of erudition exists at all. Men, having more vanity and less discretion, area good deal less cautious. There is, in fact, a whole literature of masculine babbling, ranging from Machiavelli's appalling confession of political theory to ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... this art-dualism is kept in mind. It is morally certain that the higher part is founded, as Sturt suggests, on something that has to do with those kinds of unselfish human interests which we call knowledge and morality—knowledge, not in the sense of erudition, but as a kind of creation or creative truth. This allows us to assume that the higher and more important value of this dualism is composed of what may be called reality, quality, spirit, or substance against the lower value ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives
... not that it is fully correct or definitive, but that both the material and the lines of thought that the book comprises, are useful, thoughtful, and enjoyable, taken for what they are worth. The book certainly is based on a formidable level of erudition, however cheerful the author's style ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... hand at ear whilst TOMMY spoke familiarly of Asiatic rivers and mountains, not one with name of less than five syllables. DICKY TEMPLE, who really knows something about this mysterious region, looked on in blank amazement at TOMMY'S erudition. EDWARD GREY, who would presently have to answer this damaging attack, tried to seem indifferent. But his young cheek paled when TOMMY put his ruthless finger on that Foreign Office dispatch, out of which a line of print had been dropped. This a Machiavellian ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, May 13, 1893 • Various
... of Bulfinch's classic work can be considered complete without some notice of the American scholar to whose wide erudition and painstaking care it stands as a perpetual monument. "The Age of Fable" has come to be ranked with older books like "Pilgrim's Progress," "Gulliver's Travels," "The Arabian Nights," "Robinson Crusoe," and five or six other productions of world-wide renown as a work with which ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... fact. But in the earlier centuries no such reproach rested upon us. Although perhaps, then as now, the Scotch intelligence had a special leaning towards philosophy, there was still many a learned Scot whose reputation was in all the universities, whose Latinity was unexceptionable, and his erudition immense, and to whom verses were addressed and books dedicated in every centre of letters. One of the most distinguished of these scholars was George Buchanan, and there could be no better type of the man of letters of his time, in whom the liberality of the cosmopolitan ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... pedantry of the times, by describing a discourse of Antonio Abbati's at Salvator's dinner-table, on the superior merits of the ancient painters over the moderns, in which he "bestowed all the tediousness" of his erudition on the company. Salvator answered him in his own style, and having overturned all his arguments in favor of antiquity with more learning than they had been supported, ended with an impromptu epigram, in his usual way, which brought ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner
... sixteen years old and large for his age, his slowness in learning classed him with the children of twelve or thirteen. However, as learning was considered in New Canaan a superfluous and wholly unnecessary adjunct to the means of living, Absalom's want of agility in imbibing erudition never troubled him, nor did it in the least call forth the pity or ...
— Tillie: A Mennonite Maid - A Story of the Pennsylvania Dutch • Helen Reimensnyder Martin
... his precepts. When at school I heard a dialogue, between an usher and the man who cleaned the shoes, about Mr. ——, a minister, a very corporate body with due area of waistcoat. "He is a man of great erudition," said the first. "Ah, yes sir," said Joe; "any one can see that who looks at ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... enough of her companion's erudition to understand what had attracted him to the house. She noticed the fan-shaped tracery of the broken light above the door, the flutings of the paintless pilasters at the corners, and the round window set in the gable; and she knew that, ...
— Summer • Edith Wharton
... knowledge of oriental antiquity, an interpreter may permit some beautiful allusions to slip through his hands unperceived; but, on the other hand, it ought to be frankly conceded, and, if necessary, firmly maintained, that the profitable use of our Lord's parables does not depend on rare and difficult erudition. If a deficiency in this department infers the risk of baldness in the exposition, a redundance supplies a temptation to pedantic display. It is one thing to place some ancient eastern custom in such a position ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... 'his Grace of Canterbury opines rather that this woman must be propitiated. He hath sent her books to please her tickle fancy of erudition; he hath sent her Latin chronicles and Saxon to prove to her, if he may, that the English priesthood is older than that of Rome. He is minded to convince her if he may, or, if he may not, he plans to make submission to her, to commend her learning ...
— Privy Seal - His Last Venture • Ford Madox Ford
... through the sea of books like a vessel without a pilot or a rudder. Nothing perhaps increases by indulgence more than a desultory habit of reading, especially under such opportunities of gratifying it. I believe one reason why such numerous instances of erudition occur among the lower ranks is, that, with the same powers of mind, the poor student is limited to a narrow circle for indulging his passion for books, and must necessarily make himself master of the few he possesses ere he can acquire more. Edward, on the contrary, like the epicure who only ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... mistress, so long that when she found herself in the midst of an opulence of her own she was able to practice the natural insolence of it. She knew her eighteenth century, and the tales of its great lords and all their belongings, by heart. This back-stairs erudition gave to her conversation a flavor of "oeil-de-boeuf"; her soubrette gossip passed muster for courtly wit. Morally, the mayoress was, if you wish to say so, tinsel; but to savages paste diamonds are as ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac
... informs me that he printed the book, and he has obligingly placed at my disposal a few specimens of the peculiar types used. The result was, a thick quarto volume, every page of which bristles with evidences of acute erudition, and the most accurate reasoning and discernment. It bears the title of "A Universal Alphabet, Grammar, and Language," and it has for a motto a text from the book of Zephaniah—"For then will ...
— Personal Recollections of Birmingham and Birmingham Men • E. Edwards
... pride, and the affecting thought of Bovary vaguely contributed to his pleasure by a kind of egotistic reflex upon himself. Then the presence of the doctor transported him. He displayed his erudition, cited pell-mell cantharides, ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... aetiology[obs3], etiology; circle of the sciences; pandect[obs3], doctrine, body of doctrine; cyclopedia, encyclopedia; school &c. (system of opinions) 484. tree of knowledge; republic of letters &c. (language) 560. erudition, learning, lore, scholarship, reading, letters; literature; book madness; book learning, bookishness; bibliomania[obs3], bibliolatry[obs3]; information, general information; store of knowledge &c.; education &c. (teaching) 537; culture, menticulture[obs3], attainments; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... other Englishman, I couldn't stand his airs of historic erudition about my native land, but Jack is so human and boyish in his joy of "fagging up things," and so broad-mindedly pleased that we beat his wrong-headed ancestors in our Revolution, that I don't grudge him the crumbs he's gathered. Of course, I pretend to have crumbs ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... Greek, and wrote a philosophical and historical treatise in that language. Also that Matthew, a publican, a member of the most degraded class of the Jews, was equally learned, and published a history in the same tongue. Yet these two marvels of erudition were unknown to Josephus, who expressly states that the two or three who had learned Greek, were "immediately well rewarded for their pains." The argument does not tell against Mark and Luke, as no one knows anything about these two writers, ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant
... dinner itself, and the conversation on literature and art that goes on at the dinner-table, are conceived in a spirit of the wildest humour. Trimalchio, who has two libraries, besides everything else handsome about him, is anxious to air his erudition. "Can you tell us a story," he asks a guest, "of the twelve sorrows of Hercules, or how the Cyclops pulled Ulysses' leg? I used to read them in Homer when I was a boy." After an interruption, caused by the entrance of a boar, roasted whole and ...
— Latin Literature • J. W. Mackail
... Middleton as a biographer. I regard him as a laborer who spared himself no trouble, who was enabled by his nature to throw himself with enthusiasm into his subject, who knew his work as a writer of English, and who, by a combination of erudition, intelligence, and industry, has left us one of those books of which it may truly be said that no English library should ...
— The Life of Cicero - Volume II. • Anthony Trollope
... what the connection could be between his address and this question, was not sorry to display his erudition. Assuming an air of ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... village and its neighbourhood contributed a portion of the poorest of the inhabitants. A year or two before I came, their minister died, and they had chosen another, a very worthy man, of considerable erudition, but of extreme views, as I heard, upon insignificant points, and moved by a great dislike to national churches and episcopacy. This, I say, is what I had made out about him from what I had heard; and my reader will very probably be inclined to ask, "But ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... thus at work, he was visited by learned men, who desired to know what literary undertaking Mr. Eliot had in hand. They, like himself, had been bred in the studious cloisters of a university, and were supposed to possess all the erudition which mankind has hoarded up from age to age. Greek and Latin were as familiar to them as the bab-ble of their childhood. Hebrew was like their mother tongue. They had grown gray in study; their eyes ...
— Grandfather's Chair • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... equally useless, and nothing but an encumbrance. We are forced by circumstances to become familiar with it, but the time expended on it is lost. No physical ideal—far less any soul- ideal—will ever be reached by it. In a recent generation erudition in the text of the classics was considered the most honourable of pursuits; certainly nothing could be less valuable. In our own generation, another species of erudition is lauded—erudition in the laws of matter—which, in itself, is but one degree better. The study of matter for matter's ...
— The Story of My Heart • Richard Jefferies
... Scripture, and especially by Christ upon other occasions. No writer would arbitrarily and unnecessarily have thus cast in his reader's way a difficulty which, to say the least, it required research and erudition to clear up. ...
— Evidences of Christianity • William Paley
... I never let you talk anything but wholesome nonsense when I drop in for a smoke with you," says the younger man. "You began very well, with that superstition of yours, but I won't have it spoiled by erudition. Tell me about ...
— A Little Rebel - A Novel • Margaret Wolfe Hungerford
... that might be asked by a person with a slight attack of curiosity?... No one does ask and assuredly no one answers. These riddles, it would seem, are included among the forbidden mysteries of the sphynx. The critics assert with authority and some show of erudition that the Spohrs, the Mendelssohns, the Humperdincks, and the Montemezzis are great composers. They usually admire the grandchildren of Old Lady Tradition but they neglect to justify this partiality. Nor can we trust the ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... above-mentioned, which are easily proved to be Albrecht's, not only because he prepared them himself for publication, but also because of their own excellence, you will, I think, obtain considerably better here than from other sources. Not that they are more finished in point of erudition and learning in the present book than elsewhere, but because those who interpret them in the author's own workshop, among the expansions and corrections of his autograph manuscripts and the variations of his different copies, stand in the light about ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... mind with the scholarly since it is from the scholar that the pedagogue pretends to derive his sanction; ransacking the great genuine commentators—be it a Skeat or a Masson or (may I add for old reverence' sake?) an Aldis Wright—fetching home bits of erudition, non sua poma, and announcing 'This must be the true Sion, for we ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... I must confess I do not naturally affect critical Learning; but finding my self not so much regarded as I am apt to flatter my self I may deserve from some professed Patrons of Learning, I could not but do my self the Justice to shew I am not a Stranger to such Erudition as they smile upon, if I were duly encouraged. However this only to let the World see what I could do; and shall not give my Reader any more of this kind, if he will forgive the Ostentation I shew ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... the Bengal and the Bombay texts are confusing here. I follow the text as settled by the Burdwan Pundits. If the erudition of the Burdwan Pundits be rejected, 28 would read as, "Virata, at the head of his forces, encountered Jayadratha supported by his own troops, and also Vardhaskhemi's heir, O Chastiser of foes." This would be ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... obscurity of the author from whom you take your own; there is always that most terrible reader, the reader of one book, who knows that very author, and will the more indecently hasten to bring you to the bar because he knows no other, and wishes to display his erudition. A man may escape for centuries and yet be found out. In the notorious case of William Shakespeare the offender seemed finally secure of his prey; and yet one poor lady, who ended in a lunatic asylum, was able to detect him at last, and to restore ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... Leibnitz exhausted the resources of his vast erudition, and exerted the powers of his mighty intellect without success, to solve the problem in question, it is in vain for any one else to attempt its solution. Leibnitz, himself, was too much of a philosopher to approve of ...
— A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory • Albert Taylor Bledsoe
... he outstrips Buffon and his descriptions of animals—so general, so vague, so impersonal—his records unreliable and his entire erudition ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... means discharging the duty that lay upon me—I put all those thoughts aside, and (in pursuance of my old determination) betook myself wholly to this work. Nor am I discouraged from it because I see signs in the times of the decline and overthrow of that knowledge and erudition which is now in use. Not that I apprehend any more barbarian invasions (unless possibly the Spanish empire should recover its strength, and having crushed other nations by arms should itself sink under its own weight); but the civil wars which may be ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... pirate, than I have of your wearing spurs, and being called sir Hector. The two things are equally established in my mind: but it is needful that we proceed in the matter with caution. I understand you to say, that no one else has been enlightened by your erudition in ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... edition of the Lives, which Dr. Birkbeck Hill prepared for publication before his death, and which has been issued by the Clarendon Press, with a brief Memoir of the editor, would probably have astonished Dr. Johnson. But, though the elaborate erudition of the notes and appendices might have surprised him, it would not have put him to shame. One can imagine his growling scorn of the scientific conscientiousness of the present day. And indeed, the three tomes of Dr. Hill's ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... It must be owned, however, that had his learning been a match for hers it would have stood him in poor stead at the moment; his faculties being lost in the wonder of hearing such discourse from such lips. To his compliments on her erudition she returned with a smile that what learning she had was no merit, since she had been bred in a library; to which she suddenly added:—"You are not unknown to me, Cavaliere; but I never thought to ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... The Augustan Age," by Beryl Mappin, is the second of a series of articles on English literature and its classical foundations. The erudition and enthusiasm displayed in this essay speak well for the future of the authoress, though certain faults of style and construction demand correction. Careful grammatical study would eliminate from ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... though they may live to be a hundred years old, keep always the fresh heart of twenty. James Edward Longstreet was one of them. He was a man of considerable erudition; he had always supposed that the choice had lain entirely with him. He had always been amply content with his existence, had genially considered that the whole of the bright stream of life, gently ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory
... replied Sylvia, resenting this slight upon her erudition. "Georgiana has my father's copy, and his was presented ...
— A Kentucky Cardinal • James Lane Allen
... the incredible enthusiasm with which I was inspired by a far too ambitious scheme, I do so for the sake of the young, who will thus learn by my example to conquer their imagination. It is our most cruel foe. The student who has not succeeded in stifling it is lost for ever to erudition. I still tremble to think in what depths I was nearly plunged by my adventurous spirit. I was within an ace of what one calls history. What a downfall! I should have sunk into art. For history is only art, or, ...
— Balthasar - And Other Works - 1909 • Anatole France
... might be a blessing, and schism a disaster; but it is doubtful whether he would have made the smallest concession in order to attain the one, or avoid the other. Even Bishop Ken said of him that he showed zeal to make the schism incurable.[44] A good man, and a scholar of rare erudition, he possessed nevertheless the true temper of a bigot. In middle life he had been brought into close acquaintance with the fanatic extravagances of Scotch Covenanters, his aversion to which might seem to have taught him, not the excellence of a more temperate spirit, but the desirability ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... great and promising about him. As to modern authors, neither this Lord Shaftesbury nor Addison read any thing for the latter years of their lives but Bayle's Dictionary. And most of the little scintillations of erudition, which may be found in the notes to the Characteristics, and in the Essays of Addison, are derived, almost without exception, and uniformly without acknowledgment, ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... their analogues. He then passes in review, following the zooelogical order, the fossils which had been discovered by naturalists. He even described one of them as a new species, besides citing, with an erudition then rare, all the authors and all the works where they were described. He did no more than to indicate but not name each species. Thus he was the means of soon producing a number of German authors who made little advance from lack ...
— Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution - His Life and Work • Alpheus Spring Packard
... catamites, Mamurra and Caesar, pathics both. Nor needs amaze: they share like stains—this, Urban, the other, Formian,—which stay deep-marked nor can they be got rid of. Both morbidly diseased through pathic vice, the pair of twins lie in one bed, alike in erudition, one not more than other the greater greedier adulterer, allied rivals of the girls. A comely couple of ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... affairs, because he was anxious for the honor of Rome and of Romans, not because he was or was not a "real power in the State" that his memory is still worth recording. Added to this was the intellect and the wit and erudition of the man, which were at any rate supreme. And then, though we can now see that his efforts were doomed to failure by the nature of the circumstances surrounding him, he was so nearly successful, so often on the verge of success, that we are exalted by the romance ...
— Life of Cicero - Volume One • Anthony Trollope
... mind. The nature- mystic, more particularly, maintains that there is no form of human knowledge which may not be of service to him in attaining to deeper insight and fuller experience in his intercourse with nature. He is therefore a student, in the best sense of the word—not a slave to mere erudition, but an alert and eager absorber of things new and old according to his abilities and opportunities. He tries to survey life as a whole, and to bring his complete self, body and soul, to the realisation of its possibilities. And he looks to nature for some of ...
— Nature Mysticism • J. Edward Mercer
... of being admired for wit or erudition, I cannot exactly measure in a female mind; but state it to be as delightful as you can imagine it to be, there are evils attendant upon it, which, in the estimation of a prudent father, may over-balance the good. The intoxicating effect of wit upon the brain ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... Rudbeck,[91] in 1733, and Celsius,[92] in 1745, have displayed much erudition and research in their inquiries; but the first of these writers arrived at the conclusion that nothing certain could be come to on the subject; while the second proposed raspberries as the Dudaïm; and the third maintained that ...
— Aphrodisiacs and Anti-aphrodisiacs: Three Essays on the Powers of Reproduction • John Davenport
... one occasion, described it all to her in the most eloquent letter, and wrote a full signed confession that no longer ago than the day before he had told an outsider that she kept him out of vanity, that she was envious of his talents and erudition, that she hated him and was only afraid to express her hatred openly, dreading that he would leave her and so damage her literary reputation, that this drove him to self-contempt, and he was resolved to die ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... there should scarce exist a single writer of this kind worthy our regard; and, whilst there is no other branch of history (for this is history) which hath not exercised the greatest pens, why this alone should be overlooked by all men of great genius and erudition, and delivered up to the Goths and Vandals as their lawful property, is altogether as difficult to determine. And yet that this is the case, with some very few exceptions, is most manifest. Of these I shall willingly ...
— Journal of A Voyage to Lisbon • Henry Fielding
... Lassalle, the bearer of this letter, is a young man of extraordinary talent. To the most profound erudition and the greatest insight and the richest gifts ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... attach to a series of related discussions. And, remarkable as is De Quincey's aptitude for analysis and speculation, more than once we have to regret the lack of the "saving common-sense" possessed by many far less gifted men. His erudition and insight are always a little in ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... Poussin, and Salvator Rosa attained its reputation. It is the complete expression on canvas of the spirit of the time. Claude embodies the foolish pastoralism, Salvator the ignorant terror, and Gaspar the dull and affected erudition. ...
— Lectures on Architecture and Painting - Delivered at Edinburgh in November 1853 • John Ruskin
... the fact that many references not of general psychological or criminological interest or not readily accessible to English readers have been eliminated, and in some instances more accessible ones have been inserted. Prof. Gross's erudition is so stupendous that it reaches far out into texts where no ordinary reader would be able or willing to follow him, and the book suffers no loss from the excision. In other places it was necessary to omit or to condense passages. Wherever this is done attention is called to it in the notes. ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... the catechism and the offices of the Church, made up his whole stock of erudition. That he was devout as a monk of the middle ages, conforming daily and hourly to religious ceremonies, need scarcely be stated. It was not probable that the son of Philip II. would be a delinquent to church observances. He was not deficient in courage, rode well, was fond ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... myself and you were really very sweet to listen so nicely." She has definitely risen. Ted must, too. "We must do it again some time soon—I'm going to see if there aren't any of those books with long German names drifting around 'Mode' somewhere so that I'll be able to simply stun you with my erudition the next time we ...
— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet
... even in chastity to spare. He piqued himself upon being a Stoic, and gloried in being slovenly and disgusting in honour of his profession. In this he succeeded to admiration; for he was very fat, so that he perspired almost as much in winter as in summer. Erudition and brutality seemed to be the most conspicuous features of his character, and were displayed in his conversation, sometimes together, sometimes alternately, but always disagreeably: he was not jealous, and yet he was troublesome; ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton
... reference to the two-fold tragedy of the week, Nutter's supposed death by drowning, and the murder of Sturk. In his discourses he sometimes came out with a queer bit of erudition. Such as, while it edified one portion of his congregation, filled the ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... St. Finian was sent early in the sixth century to be educated at Candida Casa or Whithorn, where a famous school of learning and sanctity had grown up round the tomb of St. Ninian. Returning to his native land, Finian, by the fame of his wonderful erudition, attracted to him numerous disciples in his {53} monastery at Moville. Here, among others, was trained the youth who became in after years the great St. Columba—the Apostle of the north ...
— A Calendar of Scottish Saints • Michael Barrett
... A vast amount of erudition has been expended by historical students to establish the truth or falsity of this Pocahontas story. The author has refrained from entering the controversy, preferring to let the story stand as it was told by Captain Smith in ...
— Pioneers of the Old South - A Chronicle of English Colonial Beginnings, Volume 5 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Mary Johnston
... the seventeenth century, and Lessing, in the eighteenth, were men far in advance of their age. They are the fathers of modern historical criticism; and to Lessing in particular, with his enormous erudition and incomparable sagacity, belongs the honour of initiating that method of inquiry which, in the hands of the so-called Tubingen School, has led to such striking and valuable conclusions concerning, the age and character of all ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... only remember one half the erudition poured forth on my addled brain by the cicerone, I might fill several pages, and fatigue others nearly as much as he fatigued me; but I will have pity on my readers, and spare them the elaborate details, profound speculations, ingenious hypotheses, and archaiological lore that assailed me, and ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... that Vespucci's letter had opened the eyes of even the clerics to the fact that there was much in the world then undiscovered, and existing contrary to their preconceived notions. The interpreter was a Dominican friar of erudition for his times, one Giovanni Giocondo, an eminent mathematician of Verona, and an architect, who was then living in Paris, where, it is said, he was engaged in building the bridge of Notre Dame. It was a Giocondo, and perhaps ...
— Amerigo Vespucci • Frederick A. Ober
... was not misled into accepting such adulation of queens as evidence of adoration of women in general. In several pages of admirable erudition (63-69), which I commend to all students of the subject, he exposes the hollowness and artificiality of this so-called Alexandrian chivalry. Fashion ordained that poems should be addressed to ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... nugis Curialium," his "Metalogic," his "Enthetic" (in verse), and his eulogy on Becket.[280] John is only too well versed in the classics, and he quotes them to an extent that does more credit to his erudition than to his taste; but he has the gift of observation, and his remarks on the follies of his time have a great historical value. In his "Policratic" is found a satire on a sort of personage who was then beginning to play his part again, ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... that Sydney at his best was, and is always, delightful. But the blundering bluster of Brougham, the solemn ineffectiveness of Horner (of whom I can never think without also thinking of Scott's delightful Shandean jest on him), the respectable erudition of the Scotch professors, cannot for one single moment be compared with the work which, in Jeffrey's own later days, in those of Macvey Napier, and in the earlier ones of Empson, was contributed by Hazlitt, by Carlyle, by Stephen, and, above all, by Macaulay. The Review never had any ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... Mr. Wilson was almost malignant. Rumor ascribes it to professional jealousy. Before Mr. Wilson came into prominence Mr. Lodge was the only scholar in politics, but Mr. Wilson was so far his superior in erudition, especially in Mr. Lodge's chosen profession of history, that he resented being deprived of his monopoly. Perhaps there is another reason. Mr. Lodge has cherished two ambitions, neither of which has been gratified. The Presidency has been the ignis fatuus he has pursued; he was the ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous
... and vivaciously commonplace. I don't know which made me feel most dreary. The predominance of my countrymen gave the dinner the gayety of a funeral; the predominance of the Mossoo gave it the fatigue of got-up enthusiasm, of trivial expansiveness. To hear strangers imparting the scraps of erudition and connoisseurship which they had that morning gathered from their valets de place and guide-books, or describing the sights they had just seen, to you, who either saw them yesterday, or would see ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... and arduous subject of the distinct natures of the soul and body, with such-accuracy, perspicuity, and subtilty, that he entirely confuted all the sophistry of Epicurus, Hobbes, and Spinosa, and equally raised the characters of his piety and erudition. ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... work, I have been struck with that defect, or rather excess, which we find in almost all the books of a hundred or a couple of hundred years ago, and which prevails still among the Germans—I mean with that quantity of useless erudition with which they intentionally swell out their works, and the result of which is that their subject is overlaid with a mass of extraneous matter on which they enlarge with great complacency, but with ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... starting life with a definite goal in view, has allowed neither the blandishments of flattery nor the frosts of discouragement to hinder his progress; but, impressing his great personality upon all with whom he came in contact, he moved steadily forward, and is now one of the best examples of erudition, eloquence and practicability in ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... was invited by Zuone Mocenigo of Venice to teach him the higher and secret learning. The Venetian supposed that Bruno, with more than human erudition, possessed the art of conveying knowledge into the heads of dullards. Disappointed in this expectation, he quarreled with his teacher, and in a spirit of revenge picked out of Bruno's writings a mass of testimony sufficient to convict him of heresy. This he turned over to the Inquisitor ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... Satires of Horace and Juvenal, and several other Pieces of Ancient and Modern Authors, which are read and commented upon; and about which even celebrated Jesuits and other religious Persons, as eminent for their Piety as their Erudition, have employed their Studies. Yet who has condemn'd or complain'd of them? We must confess, such Things should be managed with Address; and those of them who have meddled with any of the Authors I have named, have shewn that it may be ...
— The Lovers Assistant, or, New Art of Love • Henry Fielding
... has succeeded in forcibly educating so large a section of the public that immense audiences gather at the Metropolitan Opera House, one-half of them at least, in a state of such chastened susceptibility and erudition that the Tetralogy of Wagner ...
— Bluebeard • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... Canaletto; the polite jargon of eighteenth-century aristocratic Austria spoken by the characters, with its stiff, courteous forms and intermingled French, must have been studied from old journals and gazettes. And Strauss's score is equally precious, equally a thing of erudition and cleverness. Mozart turned the imbecilities of Schickaneder to his uses; Weber triumphed over the ridiculous romancings of Helmine von Chezy. But Strauss follows Hofmannsthal helplessly, soddenly. Just as Hofmannsthal imitates Hogarth, so Strauss imitates Mozart, ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... on either side of the Atlantic with regard to the literary merits of William H. Prescott. Truth, dignity, research, candor, erudition, chaste and simple elegance, mark all he has ever written. His noble powers were in perfect consonance with his noble soul. His strict sense of justice shines in all its brilliancy, in his evident desire to tell the truth, and nothing but the truth, ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... impression left upon me all along has been one of admiration for the union in him of extraordinary skill in execution with admirable cultivation of mind. With what freedom of spirit he uses and wields his vast erudition, and what capacity for close attention he must have to be able to carry the weight of a whole improvised speech with the same ease as though it were a single sentence! I do not know if I am partial, but I find no occasion for anything but praise in this young wizard and ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... mind and heart to the reception of truth, whose school-rooms are places where the young mind and heart are in a state, either of perpetual torpor, or of perpetual nightmare, have these bunglers no analogues in the men of ponderous erudition that sometimes fill the Professor's chair? Have we no examples, in our highest seminaries of learning, of men very eminent in scientific attainments, who have not in themselves the first elements of a teacher? who impart to their students no quickening impulse? ...
— In the School-Room - Chapters in the Philosophy of Education • John S. Hart
... who appeared to be the president. "But ours is a feast of reason and the flow of soul, and we are met here to discuss works of art, to hear read the practical effusions of our members, and to enjoy the society of men of intellect and erudition." ...
— Voyages and Travels of Count Funnibos and Baron Stilkin • William H. G. Kingston
... dedicated his life to literature. From the first he seems to have had little or no direction in his own studies, and hardly any instruction. He literally lived among his books, rarely leaving his own room except to pass into his father's library; his research and erudition were marvelous, and at the age of sixteen he presented his father a Latin translation and comment on Plotinus, of which Sainte-Beuve said that "one who had studied Plotinus his whole life could find something useful ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... went as far that way as delicacy would permit. I am thus circumstantial, Mr. Somerset, to show you that I do not proceed without proof, She has repeatedly said in my presence that she would never marry any man unless he were not only well-looking, but of the profoundest erudition, united with an acquaintance with men and manners which none can dispute. 'Besides,' added she, 'he must not differ with me one tittle in politics, for on that head I hold myself second to no man or woman in Europe.' And then she has ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... prologue of proem of the book called Caton, which book hath been translated into English by Master Benet Burgh, late Archdeacon of Cochester, and high canon of St. Stephen's at Westminster, which ful craftily hath made it in ballad royal for the erudition of my lord Bousher, son and heir at that time to my lord the Earl of Essex. And because of late came to my hand a book of the said Cato in French, which rehearseth many a fair learning and notable ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... That this statement may appear within bounds, he gives many examples from good authors, some of which are the following: "a most profound silence"; "a most just idea"; "a most complete orator"; "this was most extraordinary"; "an object of most perfect esteem"; "a most extensive erudition"; "he gave it most liberally away"; "it is, most assuredly, not because I value his services least"; "would most seriously affect us"; "that such a system must most widely and most powerfully," etc.; "it is most effectually nailed to the counter"; "it is most undeniable ...
— The Verbalist • Thomas Embly Osmun, (AKA Alfred Ayres)
... little of our native English. By "mathematics," reader, must be understood "cyphering." It was, in fact, a humble day-school, at which reading and writing were taught to us boys in the morning, and the same slender erudition was communicated to the girls, our sisters, etc., in the evening. Now Starkey presided, under Bird, over both establishments. In my time, Mr. Cook, now or lately a respectable singer and performer at Drury-Lane Theatre, and nephew to Mr. Bird, had ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... relatively few university instructors have given any attention to the matter of teaching itself. They have studied the subject matter with which they are to deal. They have become proficient so far as knowledge is concerned. No fault can be found with them touching the matter of erudition. But they have not given any reflective thought to the art of teaching. They have not made a study of the human mind in its development in order to know how it receives knowledge as mental nourishment, and to understand ...
— On the Firing Line in Education • Adoniram Judson Ladd
... in introducing Hans Breitmann to the English public, and who has ever been his warmest friend. Another friend who encouraged and aided me by criticism was the late OCTAVE DELEPIERRE, a man of immense erudition, especially in archæology, curiosa and facetiæ. I trust that I may be pardoned for here mentioning that he often spoke of Breitmann's "Interview with the Pope" as his favorite Macaronic poem, which, as he had published ...
— The Breitmann Ballads • Charles G. Leland
... approximate figures for the birth and death of Gilbert the years 1170-80 to 1230. This discrepancy of twenty-five or thirty years between the views of two competent and unprejudiced investigators, as a mere question of erudition and interpretation, is perhaps scarcely worthy of prolonged discussion. But as both biographers argue from substantially the same data, the arguments reveal so many interesting and pertinent facts, and the numerous ...
— Gilbertus Anglicus - Medicine of the Thirteenth Century • Henry Ebenezer Handerson
... sidewalk of the Corso, "for an hour or so among the people, just on the edges of the fun." Sumner invited Mrs. Hawthorne to take a stroll and see pictures with him, from which she returned delighted with his criticisms and erudition. ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns
... their task by digesting and arranging the contents of the libraries. There were then no short cuts to learning, no comprehensive lexicons, no dictionaries of antiquities, no carefully prepared thesauri of mythology and history. Each student had to hold in his brain the whole mass of classical erudition. The text and the canon of Homer, Plato, Aristotle, and the tragedians had to be decided. Greek type had to be struck. Florence, Venice, Basle, Lyons, and Paris groaned with printing presses. The ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... said, enunciating in the oracular manner of a day gone by—"ah, I was talking with Jack London about it before he died. Dear Jack! A great soul. A marvelous spirit. We were in the south seas together. Yes, the old days were different. Erudition counted for something. I was Buffalo Bill's first press agent. Also I worked for dear P. T. Barnum. ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... are the occasions when, we actively believe that Charles I was executed? Primarily: examinations, when we perform the bodily movement of writing it down; conversation, when we assert it to display our historical erudition; and political discourses, when we are engaged in showing what Soviet government leads to. In all these cases bodily movements (writing or ...
— The Analysis of Mind • Bertrand Russell
... Levites had been no doubt complete; but changes had been effected as circumstances required. He was presumed to have alluded to the order of Melchisedek, but he abstained from any mention of the name. He roamed very wide, and gave many of his hearers an idea that his erudition had carried him into regions in which it was impossible to follow him. The gist of his argument was to show that audacity in Reform was the very backbone of Conservatism. By a clearly pronounced disunion of Church and State the theocracy of Thomas a Becket would ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... at the King's Head, in Ivy Lane, near St. Paul's, of which the other members were Dr. Salter, a Cambridge divine; Hawkesworth; Mr. Ryland, a merchant; Mr. John Payne, the bookseller; Mr. John Dyer, a man of considerable erudition, and a friend of Burke's; Doctors Macghie, Baker, and Bathurst, three physicians; and ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... ignore each other, or notice me only to begin a clamorous exhibition of their distinctive skill. The erudite for the most part are rapt in an impervious and apoplectic complacency, from which only a denial of their erudition can rouse them. Usually they are led about by little watchers and attendants, and often there are small and active-looking creatures, small females usually, that I am inclined to think are a sort of wife to them; ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells
... fortune in Paris. At the age of twenty-seven he had presented, in a competition opened by the Academy of Inscriptions, an essay on the Etruscan language, which took the prize and was unanimously declared a masterpiece of sagacious erudition. He had hoped for some time that this first success, which had gained him renown among learned men, would aid him in obtaining some lucrative position and rescue him from the precarious situation in which he found himself. Nothing resulted from it. His merits ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... from this fount the streamlets flow, That widen in their course. Hero and sage arise to show Science the mighty source, And laud the land whose talents rock The cradle of her power, And wreaths are twined round Plymouth Rock, From erudition's bower. ...
— Poems • Mary Baker Eddy
... Skye, there is an old crofter who, in his early years, worked at the loom with Alexander Bain, late Professor in the University of Aberdeen. Half a century ago, John Stuart Mill said that Bain's erudition was encyclopaedic. From long residence in France, I know that few British philosophers are better known than Bain (whose name the French amusingly pronounce to rhyme with vin). This old crofter tells how he used to chaff the future professor for invariably having a book in front of him ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... her little white hands with joy. "Bravo, bravo, my royal OEdipus!" cried she, gayly. "The sphinx is overcome; but she will not throw herself into the sea just yet. She is too happy to bend the knee before her husband's erudition." ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach |
