"Literature" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Of what use are Eskimos to the world? They are too far removed to be of value for commercial enterprises and, furthermore, they lack ambition. They have no literature nor, properly speaking, any art. They value life only as does a fox, or a bear, purely by instinct. But let us not forget that these people, trustworthy and hardy, will yet prove their value to mankind. With their help, the world shall discover ...
— The North Pole - Its Discovery in 1909 under the auspices of the Peary Arctic Club • Robert E. Peary
... what reason teaches concerning our status in this world; and this teaching of reason is confirmed by the convictions of all nations and all ages of mankind. The oldest page of literature that has come down to us, namely, the first chapter of the first book of Holy Writ, lays down this same law, and no improvement has been made in it during all subsequent ages. Whether we regard this writing as inspired, as Christians ...
— Moral Principles and Medical Practice - The Basis of Medical Jurisprudence • Charles Coppens
... me for differing from him on these points. I cannot close this Preface without expressing my deep respect for his noble and gentle character, and the great services which he has rendered to Greek Literature. ...
— Charmides • Plato
... no sure sign that just because a student has took a course in literature, that he ...
— The Century Handbook of Writing • Garland Greever
... beautiful in music had been sufficiently exploited by Mozart and Haydn. Beethoven demonstrated that music has a higher function than that of mere beauty, or the simple act of giving pleasure. The beautiful in literature is not its best part. To the earnest thinker, the seeker after truth, the student who looks for illumination on life's problem, beauty in itself is insufficient. It is the best office of art, of Beethoven's ...
— Beethoven • George Alexander Fischer
... historical information, extending from the Talmud to the most recent legislation of Hesse-Darmstadt, is compressed into twenty-one octavo pages! The doctrinal part of the memorandum is not less rich. Many respected names from the literature of Germany, France, and England are forcibly dragged in; and the general conclusion drawn from this mass of raw, undigested materials is believed to be ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... peculiarly fitted for the task which he had undertaken, because he had, as a lexicographer, been under the necessity of taking a wider view of the English language than any of his predecessors. That his knowledge of our literature was extensive is indisputable. But, unfortunately, he had altogether neglected that very part of our literature with which it is especially desirable that an editor of Shakspeare should be conversant. It is dangerous ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... thousands of generations of ancestral conflict and passed on to us as a heritage to be rooted out of our nature before we shall realize in its fullness the ideal for which we strive. Mortal conflict sanctified by religion, devastation idealized by literature, pillage justified by patriotism, fellow-destruction ennobled by self-sacrifice—these form a complex of contradictory emotions from which men are as yet unable to unravel the one essential characteristic of war; ...
— Prize Orations of the Intercollegiate Peace Association • Intercollegiate Peace Association
... still in existence. In making a new copy for the press every facility was granted by the Librarians of the Advocates' Library, with their well-known courtesy and liberality; and much aid was rendered by David Laing, Esq., a gentleman thoroughly conversant with Scottish ecclesiastical literature, and generously ready to communicate to others the benefit of his own extensive and ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie
... that she stood at the parting of the ways. England was indeed an aristocracy, but a liberal one; and the ideas growing in the middle classes were those which had already made America, and were remaking France. The fiercest Jacobins, such as Danton, were deep in the liberal literature of England. The people had no religion to fight for, as in Russia or La Vendee. The parson was no longer a priest, and had long been a small squire. Already that one great blank in our land had made snobbishness the only religion of South England; and turned rich men into a ...
— The Crimes of England • G.K. Chesterton
... admiring reader of the Albums, the Souvenirs, the Keepsakes, and all that flood of Christmas-present lore which yearly irrigated England, with pretty covers and engravings; and floods of elegant twaddle—the milk, not destitute of water, on which the babes of literature were then fed. On this, my genius throve. I had a little album, enriched with many gems of original thought and observation, which I jotted down in suitable language. Lately, turning over these faded leaves of rhyme and prose, I lighted, under this day's date, ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... hardly be called a story, but each of these sketches conveys a distinct atmosphere of the country and the people, and shows the individuality of each writer. The unhappy state of Poland for more than 150 years has placed political and social problems in the foreground of Polish literature. Writers are therefore judged and appraised by their fellow-countrymen as much by their patriotism as by their ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... the same thing in literature. Write half a dozen folios full of other people's ideas (as all folios are pretty sure to be), and you serve as ballast to the lower shelves of a library, about as like to be disturbed as the kentledge ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... as yet no book entirely devoted to the development of the plan of the parish church in England, and the body of literature which bears upon the subject is not very accessible to the ordinary student. The present volume is an attempt to indicate the main lines on which that development proceeded. It is obvious that, ...
— The Ground Plan of the English Parish Church • A. Hamilton Thompson
... Memory." Whereas in the Reflections Swift is assaulted with hard obvious blows, in The British Academy a more subtle intelligence is evident: the attack is oblique and ironic, and a tone of Addisonian urbanity is fairly well maintained. Nevertheless it is not as literature that these two answers to Swift are to be judged. They are minor, though interesting, documents in political warfare which cut athwart ...
— Reflections on Dr. Swift's Letter to Harley (1712) and The British Academy (1712) • John Oldmixon
... him soon after his return from India, and told him that when there he used to get up at five every morning (as everybody else did), and till nine or ten he read Greek and Latin, and went through the whole range of classical literature of every sort and kind; that one day in the Government library he had met with the works of Chrysostom, fourteen Greek folios, and that he had taken home first one volume and then another, till he had read the whole through, that is, he had ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... with Mrs. Parflete was pure sentimentality from beginning to end—a poet's love. He would have another feeling for you—something much stronger. You are so human, Sara. I would far sooner kill you than write poetry to you. You are life—not literature. That little thing with shining hair and a porcelain face is for dreams. Of course, he will always love her—after a fashion. He might even compare you with her and find her your superior in every way—except as a woman. We may be at moments ...
— Robert Orange - Being a Continuation of the History of Robert Orange • John Oliver Hobbes
... store where the marks of the departed store fixtures were visible along the walls and Schmitt's old counter stood against one side. Piles of Red Cross literature now lay upon it. Upon a rough makeshift table were boxes full of yarn (destined to keep many a long needle busy) and the place was full of the signs of ...
— Tom Slade on a Transport • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... nations, as well as of various states of the Union, he urged Congress to pass laws for the promotion of agriculture, commerce, and manufactures, the "encouragement of the mechanic and of the elegant arts, the advancement of literature, and the progress of the sciences, ornamental and profound." "Were we," he asked, "to slumber in indolence or fold up our arms and proclaim to the world that we are palsied by the will of our constituents, would it not be to ...
— Rise of the New West, 1819-1829 - Volume 14 in the series American Nation: A History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... art spread all over the intelligent world, and more especially in France; it was not contented with merely architectural forms in colourless cathedrals, but decorated them with carvings painted in gay colours, used every space for pictures, drew upon all literature for its materials. In Dante, Chaucer, and Petrarch, in the German Niebelungenlied, in the French romances, in the Icelandic Sagas, in Froissart and the chroniclers, you may find the same spirit; and each town smote its own epic into stone upon ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook
... Popular literature, popular art, and popular drama, including in this by a vigorous stretching of the idea the movie, are in a conspiracy against reality. This is of course because of the tyranny of the "Happy Ending." While the ...
— The Nervous Housewife • Abraham Myerson
... locality, and not far away were fresh woods and pastures.... The good health of Browning's father may be inferred from the fact that he lived to be eighty-four, "without a day's illness;" he was a practical, successful business man, an official in the Bank of England. His love of literature and the arts is proved by the fact that he practised them constantly for the pure joy of the working; he wrote reams and reams of verse, without publishing a line. He had extraordinary facility in composition, being able to write poetry even faster than his son. Rossetti said that he had "a real ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps
... commonplace girl of the stage, but an educated, refined, ambitious woman, matured beyond her years by experience, her conversation exhibiting a wide range of reading, interwoven, with a deep knowledge of life. They spoke of ideals, of art, of literature, of secret aspirations, not often mentioned during such early acquaintanceship, breaking through that mental barrenness which had characterized their living for weeks, this common ground of thought ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... Shakspeare, and Spenser, as much as you ought, you will not require wide enlargement of shelves to right and left of them for purposes of perpetual study. Among modern books, avoid generally magazine and review literature,[C] Sometimes it may contain a useful abridgment or a wholesome piece of criticism; but the chances are ten to one it will either waste your time or mislead you.... Avoid especially that class of literature which has a knowing tone; it is the most poisonous of all. Every good book, or piece of book, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... porter, and in the very mien of the waiters, he had learnt that the Brighton Sunday was ruined. He left the window. On a round table in the middle of the room were ranged, with religious regularity, all the most esoteric examples of periodical literature in our language, from "The Iron-Trades Review" to "The Animals' Guardian." With one careless movement he destroyed the balanced perfection of a labour into which some menial had put his soul, and then dropped into a gigantic easy-chair near the fire, whose thin flames ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... been lavishly paid for out of his own pocket. It was at one of these exhibitions that the idea occurred to me of making a new pleasure for myself out of Margaret's society, by teaching her really to appreciate and enjoy the literature which she had evidently hitherto only studied as a task. My fancy revelled by anticipation in all the delights of such an employment as this. It would be like acting the story of Abelard and Heloise ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins
... The following tract, written probably by Thomas Sheridan, Swift's humorous friend, is interesting as affording an example of the lighter kind of literature brought into existence by this agitation. It may be that Swift had a hand in its composition. The text is taken from a copy of the original broadside in the South Kensington Collection. It was published during the height ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. VI; The Drapier's Letters • Jonathan Swift
... want her to leave newspaper work and try literature," he said, "but Jeanne's afraid to cut loose. She's earning her living ... and she's alone in the world. No one to fall back on, ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... doctrine from Adepts and Masters who have passed to a higher plane of existence. We think it proper to give in some little detail an account of the general teachings of Theosophy on this point, the reader being referred to the general Theosophical literature for more extended information ...
— Reincarnation and the Law of Karma - A Study of the Old-New World-Doctrine of Rebirth, and Spiritual Cause and Effect • William Walker Atkinson
... the story of Troy, or of Rome without a backward glance at AEneas, fabled founder of the race and hero of Virgil's world-famous Latin epic? Any understanding of German civilization would be incomplete without knowledge of the mythical prince Siegfried, hero of the earliest literature of the Teutonic people, finally immortalized in the nineteenth century through the musical dramas of Wagner. Any understanding of English civilization would be similarly incomplete without the semi-historic figure of King Arthur, glorified through the accumulated ...
— Myths and Legends of All Nations • Various
... WITH all the literature published on behalf of Free Libraries—institutions which, after all, are of doubtful good—no one so far has written a book to assist in making THE PRIVATE LIBRARY combine practical useful qualities with ...
— The Private Library - What We Do Know, What We Don't Know, What We Ought to Know - About Our Books • Arthur L. Humphreys
... see I'm a great admirer of your talent and always read your articles with great enjoyment. . . . Don't imagine I'm flattering you—God forbid!—I'm only giving honour where honour is due. . . . I am always reading you . . . always! To some extent I am myself not a stranger to literature— that is, of course . . . I will not venture to call myself an authoress, but . . . still I have added my little quota . . . I have published at different times three stories for children. . . . You have not read them, of course. . . . I have translated ...
— The Schoolmaster and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... were frequently in much distress. On his return to England, at the Restoration, he was received with the respect due to his unshaken fidelity, and in 1664, was created Earl of Ogle and Duke of Newcastle. He passed the remainder of his life in retirement, devoting himself to literature, to which he was much attached, and attending to the repair of his fortune. He died in 1676, aged 84, and was buried with his duchess in Westminster Abbey. His literary labours are now almost forgotten, if we except his principal production, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 566, September 15, 1832 • Various
... has been lately introduced into literature, of writing very long notes upon very indifferent verses, appears to me a rather happy invention, as it supplies us with a mode of turning dull poetry to account; and as horses too heavy for the saddle may yet serve well enough to draw lumber, so Poems of this kind make ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... said the Angel, answering the look in his friend's eyes, "I believe no one on earth understands the anguish those of us who compose suffer from noise. It is not nervousness which causes us this anguish. It is the creating spirit,—the power of the man who brings words to life in literature or who brings tones to life in music. It is part of the artistic temperament, and if I ever saw a child start and shake and go white at a sudden noise, I should lay my hand on the little chap's head and say to his mother: 'Take care of that child's brain, ...
— At Home with the Jardines • Lilian Bell
... with a contrary complexion attain its position. This great current of human interest floats our politics; it feeds the springs of enthusiasm, coming forth in doctrines of non-resistance, of government by love, and the like; and our literature contains essays upon love and friendship which, in our judgment, are not equalled in the literature ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... showing the geographic distribution of North American lagomorphs, some conflicting statements in the literature have led us to examine the pertinent specimens of the Florida cottontail and the Audubon cottontail with results as given below. The study here reported upon was aided by a contract between the Office of Naval Research, Department ...
— Comments on the Taxonomy and Geographic Distribution of Some North American Rabbits • E. Raymond Hall
... letters; a perusal of a few pages of the abstract will give a better idea of both than an elaborate description. The style is undoubtedly a bad one, whether it be compared with the great works of Greek and Latin literature or with our own estimate of excellence in speech. Scarcely ever do we find a thought clothed in clear, precise, closely-fitting words, or a metaphor which really corresponds to the abstract idea that is represented by it. We take up sentence ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... [FN21] The literature of all peoples contains this physiological perversion. Birds do not sing hymns; the song of the male is simply to call the female and when the pairing-season ends ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... the sister province was long hermetically sealed against the footprints of the white man. Twenty or even ten years ago to venture within its limits would have cost a European his life. Its capital, Changsha, was the seat of an anti-foreign propaganda from which issued masses of foul literature; but the lawless hostility of the people has been held in check by the judicious firmness of the present viceroy, and that city is now the seat of numerous mission bodies which are vying with each other in their efforts to diffuse light and knowledge. It is also open to commerce ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin
... person the physical exuberance of youth and the melancholy of disillusioned manhood, I was deprived of the balanced energy proper to either age, and kept up a braggart courage with the headiest wine of literature. I could not bear the bland homilies of the preachers, but ranged myself with the apostles of rebellion who blew imperious trumpet blasts before the ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith
... work. He sought men who believed in unions, and were willing to take the risk of trying to convert others. In each place he visited he would get a group together, and would arrange some way to communicate with them after he left, smuggling in propaganda literature for distribution. So there would be the nucleus of an organisation. In a year or two they would have such a nucleus in every camp, and then they would be ready to come into the open, calling meetings in the towns, ...
— King Coal - A Novel • Upton Sinclair
... at first enthusiastic for the Giovine Italia; she afterward became averse to it, and sided with Guizot, Duchatel, and Mignet, her intimate friend. She was well versed—or mixed herself much—in literature, politics, the study of theology, and journalism; a woman that had some of the feelings and anxieties of men, together with all those of her own sex, and who was now travelling through Italy intent upon manly business, but after woman's fashion. Other volunteers afterward started, and a vessel ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne
... apparent in the writings of those who have visited it; no other spectacle in America has inspired so large a literature. Joaquin Miller found it fearful, full of glory, full of God. Charles Dudley Warner pronounced it by far the most sublime of earthly spectacles. William Winter saw it a pageant of ghastly desolation. Hamlin Garland found its lines chaotic and ...
— The Book of the National Parks • Robert Sterling Yard
... not at Medchester now," he reminded her. "You have kicked your own limitation away. Literature is as wide ...
— A Prince of Sinners • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... frankly, that I feel much of this criticism is just. The inquiry on the mother-age civilisation was only one small section of my book on Woman. I realise that very much was hurried over. There is on this subject of the origin of the family a literature so extensive, and such a variety of opinions, that the work of the student is far from easy. The whole question is too extensive to allow anything like adequate treatment within the space of a brief, and necessarily insufficient, summary. My ...
— The Position of Woman in Primitive Society - A Study of the Matriarchy • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... brother-in-law Mr S. M. Samuel, has taken a summer residence, and visit their mother, Mrs Montefiore, at Kennington Terrace. They contrive to devote a portion of the day or evening to the study of the French language and literature. Mr Montefiore, as captain of the local militia, continues taking lessons on ...
— Diaries of Sir Moses and Lady Montefiore, Volume I • Sir Moses Montefiore
... to books and cycles of romance in medieval literature—minstrels' enumerations of their stock-in-trade, and humorous allusions like those of Sir Thopas, and otherwise. There are two passages, among others, which seem to do their best to cover the whole ground, or at least to exemplify all the chief groups. One of these ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... tradition that a detective was an agile person with a variety of side-whiskers no longer obtains even in light literature, and the most imaginative of us is frankly aware of the fact that a detective is just a common man earning (or pretending to earn) a common living by common and obvious means. Yet in spite of ourselves we are accustomed to attribute superhuman acuteness and a lightning-like ...
— Courts and Criminals • Arthur Train
... century, and made many converts, who were afterwards exterminated. Gutzaleff, a famous Protestant pioneer, landed on an island at Basil's Bay, in 1832, and remained there a month, distributing Chinese literature. Mr. Thomas, a British missionary, secured a passage on board the ill-fated General Sherman in 1866, and was killed with the rest of the crew. Dr. Ross, the Scottish Presbyterian missionary of ...
— Korea's Fight for Freedom • F.A. McKenzie
... me tell you—I have made nails many a day and many a night—they are iron exclamation points, which this unlettered, dwarfed boy is unconsciously arraying against you, against the British government, and the government of British literature, for cutting him off without a letter of the English alphabet, when printing is done by steam; for incarcerating him for no sin on his parents' side, but poverty, in a dark, six-by-eight prison of hard ...
— Jemmy Stubbins, or The Nailer Boy - Illustrations Of The Law Of Kindness • Unknown Author
... Monthly. Contains Stories, Articles upon Literature, Science, Biography, and Art, and 'Table ...
— Chatto & Windus Alphabetical Catalogue of Books in Fiction and General Literature, Sept. 1905 • Various
... consciences, answer to their fellow men for the inevitable consequences. But it must be confessed that there is in this department a sad want. All readers of moderate discrimination must have felt it painfully. In the literature of fiction we need organization. How do we know a good tea from a bad? Is it by the universal consent of the good people of China—by a democratic 'censeatur' of the celestial nation? Not at all. Every variety is tasted by men who rinse their mouths after each swallow, and the comparative merits ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... as far as possible from the young hands about us, and would rather have deprived them of the noble French language altogether than have allowed it to bring them such lessons as Jacques and Valentine. Yet we retain the old love for her; the world of literature still seems brighter for her footsteps; and should we live to learn her death, tears must follow it, and the sense of void left by the loss of a true friend, noble and loyal-hearted, if mistaken. With this confession of sympathy with the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... encouragement. The people in general stand not only much indebted to an ingenious bookseller, who introduced many of the most distinguished authors among them, but several of the most respectable citizens also united and formed a society for the promotion of literature, having obtained a charter of incorporation for that purpose. All the new publications in London, and many of the most valuable books, both ancient and modern, have been imported for the use of this society the members of which were ambitious of proving themselves ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 2 • Alexander Hewatt
... Britain, the dominant industrial and maritime power of the 19th century, played a leading role in developing parliamentary democracy and in advancing literature and science. At its zenith, the British Empire stretched over one-fourth of the earth's surface. The first half of the 20th century saw the UK's strength seriously depleted in two World Wars. The second half witnessed ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... recover his very earliest lucubrations scattered among the ephemeral periodicals of that day. Plays of his might be dug out, whose very names are unknown to his most intimate friends. He scattered his early fruit far and wide,—getting little from the world in exchange. Literature was then a harder struggle than in our days. Jerrold did not know the successful men who presided over it. He had no patrons; and he had few friends. The isolation and poverty in which he formed his mind and style deepened the peculiarity which was a characteristic of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... realism, yet it does not rise much higher in interpretation than what our neighbours would to-day call the drame passionel. The interest is much the same that is aroused in a student of Elizabethan literature by that study of murder, Arden of Feversham, not that higher attraction that he feels—horrors notwithstanding—for The Maid's Tragedy of Beaumont and Fletcher, or The ...
— The Earlier Work of Titian • Claude Phillips
... have thought, after all," murmured he, "that we'd find books intact as we did? A miracle—nothing less! With our printing-plant already at work under the cliff, all the art, science and literature of the ages—all that's worth preserving—can be still kept for mankind. But if I hadn't happened to find a library of books in a New York bonded warehouse all cased up for transportation, the work of preservation would ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... everywhere met with the most brilliant success. In 1827 the father died, leaving him alone in the world; but good fortune was on his side. During his stay in Paris he had made the friendship of Victor Hugo, George Sand, Lamartine, and other great lights in literature and music, and their influence prepared the way for his permanent success. Notwithstanding that he was in many senses a Bohemian and a man of the world, he had a strong religious tendency. For a time he became deeply interested in the doctrines ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton
... incompetent to give an opinion on works of art. But connoisseurs familiar with the masterpieces of the Vatican and of the Florentine gallery allowed that the taste of Somers in painting and sculpture was exquisite. Philology was one of his favourite pursuits. He had traversed the whole vast range of polite literature, ancient and modern. He was at once a munificent and severely judicious patron of genius and learning. Locke owed opulence to Somers. By Somers Addison was drawn forth from a cell in a college. In distant countries the name of Somers was mentioned ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... on the belief that an efficient reader for the fifth grade must score high when tested on five fundamental features: quality of literature; variety of literature; organization of literature; quantity of literature; and definite helps sufficient to make the text a ...
— The Elson Readers, Book 5 • William H. Elson and Christine M. Keck
... reverse way, their tailors are no less scientific than they. Doctoring is an art, not a science: any layman who is interested in science sufficiently to take in one of the scientific journals and follow the literature of the scientific movement, knows more about it than those doctors (probably a large majority) who are not interested in it, and practise only to earn their bread. Doctoring is not even the art of keeping people in health (no doctor seems able to advise you what to eat any better ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma: Preface on Doctors • George Bernard Shaw
... connected with the University. In after life he used to speak very slightingly of this early work, which he had the better right to do, as, whatever may have been the degree of their merits, the best papers had certainly been written by himself. He was well read in English literature, had a correct taste, and wrote readily and happily, both in prose and verse. He was more than ten years older than Jane, and had, I believe, a large share in directing her reading ...
— Memoir of Jane Austen • James Edward Austen-Leigh
... but, unhappily, the muse was froward, which was singular, since the elite of Little Primpton had unimpeachable morals, ideals of the most approved character, and principles enough to build a church with; nor was an acquaintance with literature wanting. They all read the daily papers, and Mr. and Mrs. Jackson, in addition, read the Church Times. Mary even knew by heart whole chunks of Sir Lewis Morris, and Mr. Dryland recited Tennyson at penny readings. But when inspiration is wanting, a rhyming dictionary, ...
— The Hero • William Somerset Maugham
... "Golden Temple," on the banks of Amrita-Saras, the "Lake of Immortality." The head Guru, or instructor, of Sikhs resides there. He never crosses the boundaries of the temple. His chief occupation is the study of the book called Adigrantha, which belongs to the sacred literature of this strange bellicose sect. The Sikhs respect him as much as the Tibetans respect their Dalai-Lama. The Lamas in general consider the latter to be the incarnation of Buddha, the Sikhs think that the Maha-Guru of Amritsar is the incarnation of Nanak, the founder of their ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... the Persian king Nooshirwan, his physician Barzoueh made various journeys into India, one of which was specially for the purpose of obtaining copies of Indian literature, and another to obtain ...
— On the Antiquity of the Chemical Art • James Mactear
... appeal to my imagination. Outside of these works, I write Aunt Vera to send me those of different poets and celebrated novelists, and to send them as much as possible in chronological order, so that I may improve my knowledge of literature. This simple desire is in opposition to Colonel P——'s system. Fortunately, he does not know foreign languages, and such books are sent for approval to Mr. N——, who, more intelligent than his colleague, does not need to read a book through to grasp its motive, and so he signs ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III, June 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... multiplying footnotes, we refer here to the chief sources on which we rely in this chapter. C. Lassen, Indische Altherthumskunde; Max Mueller, History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature (and other works); J. Muir, Sanskrit Texts; Pictet, Les Origines Indo-Europeennes; Sir William Jones, Works, 13 vols.; Vivian de Saint-Martin, Etude, &c., and articles in the Revue Germanique; Monier Williams, Sakoontala (a new translation), the Ramayana, ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... which is essentially sound and truthful, and must therefore take its stand in the permanent literature ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 181, April 16, 1853 • Various
... drawing-room, the boudoir, the closet. The young infest our homes, pursue us to our very hearths; our household deities are in league with them; they destroy all our domestic comfort; they become public nuisances, widely destructive to our literature. Their mode of training will explain the nature of the danger. The infant reciting bore is trained much after the manner of a learned pig. Before the quadruped are placed, on certain bits of dirty greasy cards, the letters of the alphabet, or short nonsensical phrases interrogatory with their answers, ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... its share in literature and art. Most of the books it will print will not be literature, for idle books are written for idle people, and many idle people are left over from less insistent times. The books sold by the hundred thousands to men and women not trained to make time count, will be forgotten ...
— The Call of the Twentieth Century • David Starr Jordan
... "A Guide to Cookery" written by a countess for the use of families of moderate means, and the book was very well worth buying if only for the sake of a little mild amusement when the spirit is in danger of growing too serious for mental health. A great chapter in humorous literature is that in which Mark Twain places on record how for a few brief but exciting days he edited an agricultural paper while the editor was, perforce, absent from his chair. Good, it is to read the answers he returned to rural inquirers who wished for counsel in relation to the difficulties ...
— The Message and the Man: - Some Essentials of Effective Preaching • J. Dodd Jackson
... territory. The temper of the times is in sundry respects favourable, notwithstanding its too frequent possession by an incensed political spirit. Has there not been for half a century a spontaneous, an ardent, a loving return in literature, of our own and all countries, to the old and great in the productions of the human mind—to nature, with all her fountains? Does not the spirit of man, in the great civilized nations at this day, travail with desire of knowing itself, its laws, its conditions, its ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... altogether on account of my health. I have been trying to do a good turn to our little friend La Briere. The poor fellow has fallen in love with a certain Mademoiselle Modeste de La Bastie, a rather pale, insignificant, and thread-papery little thing, who, by the way, has the vice of liking literature, and calls herself a poet to excuse the caprices and humors of a rather sullen nature. You know Ernest,—he is so easy to catch that I have been afraid to leave him to himself. Mademoiselle de La Bastie was inclined to coquet ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac
... literature, he felt an inclination to communicate to the public his ideas on a topic connected with his art. His "Analysis of Beauty" made its appearance in one volume quarto, in the year 1753. Its leading principle is, that beauty fundamentally consists ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler
... and important literature concerning geology, the greater part of it is of a very special nature, and will convey to the beginner no substantial information whatever. It is not until he has become familiar with the field with which he is enabled to deal ...
— Outlines of the Earth's History - A Popular Study in Physiography • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... blesses the Son of Man who is "Lord also of the Sabbath." This is the evening when they carry home their reading for the week, as well as their Sunday dinner. I wish more could be said for the general quality, intellectual or moral, of this literature. But most of it is better than mental vacancy, and a great advance on the illiteracy in which these classes were sunk not so very long ago. And it must be borne in mind that the transient and sensational reading which so many of us carry in cars and cabins, or buy at news-stands, or take out ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... bookkeeping for a Richmond firm, but he is becoming greatly interested in my alfalfa, and says he sometimes wishes he had taken an agricultural course instead of the literary at college. His grandmother says she reckons the agricultural college could give him about all the literature he needs keeping books for a hides and tallow wholesale company; and I am coming to believe that she is about right. I still remember that the dative of indirect object is used with most Latin verbs compounded ...
— The Story of the Soil • Cyril G. Hopkins
... geologists could be of the exact duration of time that had elapsed since the dawn of life. His plea for more time since the cooling of the globe than physicists were willing to allow remains one of the classics of geological literature. But he carried the question much farther. The inference which was widely drawn by the enemies of evolution from the arguments of Sir William Thomson was that if geologists had overestimated the age of the cooled earth there was not time for the evolution of animals and plants ...
— Thomas Henry Huxley; A Sketch Of His Life And Work • P. Chalmers Mitchell
... living by literature at the same time that he saw he might have to rely largely upon his own exertions for a livelihood, Poe expressed a wish to enter the army. After no little difficulty a cadetship was obtained for him at the West Point Military Academy, a military school in many respects equal ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... I make of him?' proceeded Charles's thoughts. 'He won't be worth his salt if he goes on in this way; he has got a graver specimen of literature there than I ever saw Philip himself read on a week-day; he has been puritanized till he is good for nothing; I'll trouble myself no more about him!' He tried to read, but presently looked up again. 'Plague! I can't keep my thoughts off him. That sober look does ...
— The Heir of Redclyffe • Charlotte M. Yonge
... uncertainties of which have been greatly diminished by recent research. They are partly inscriptions (for the oldest period exclusively so), and partly public documents, preserved in the pages of antiquarians. Much may be learnt from the study of coins, which, though less ancient than some of the written literature, are often more archaic in their forms. The earliest of the existing remains is the song of the Arval Brothers, an old rustic priesthood (qui sacra publica faciunt propterea ut fruges ferant arva), [10] dating from the times of the kings. This fragment was discovered at Rome ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... natural operations of this globe, by which the size and shape of our land are changed, are so slow as to be altogether imperceptible to men who are employed in pursuing the various occupations of life and literature. We must not ask the industrious inhabitant, for the end or origin of this earth: he sees the present, and he looks no farther into the works of time than his experience can supply his reason. We must not ask the statesman, who looks into the history of time past, for the rise and fall of ...
— Theory of the Earth, Volume 2 (of 4) • James Hutton
... 1747, after having acquired such share of classical literature as the times he lived in would permit, O'Leary went to France, with the intention of devoting himself to the ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... recalled to the Netherlands. If the report were true, said some of the gentlemen in the provinces, it would be likely to grow to his feet. He professed to wish himself blind and deaf that he might have no knowledge of the world's events, described himself as buried in literature, and fit for no business save to remain in his chamber, fastened to his books, or occupied with private affairs and religious exercises. He possessed a most charming residence at Orchamps, where he spent a great portion of his time. In one of his letters to Vice-Chancellor ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... condemned to exile, and his family was exterminated. Alone in the world, he was sighing bitterly, when he awoke with a start. All had taken place in so short a space of time that Han Chung-li's wine was not yet hot. This is the incident referred to in Chinese literature in the phrase 'rice-wine dream.' Convinced of the hollowness of worldly dignities, he followed Han Chung-li to the Ho Ling Mountains at Chung-nan in Shensi, where he was initiated into the divine mysteries, and ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner
... under cover of the bolder efforts of these nobler spirits, then settles back upon the ease and comfort of that position, and turns her small artillery on her own sisters? I feel a sense of shame for American literature, when I think how our literary women shrink, and cringe, and apologize, and dodge to avoid being taken for "strong-minded women." Oh, there's no danger. I don't wonder that their literary efforts are stricken with the palsy of weakness from the beginning. I don't wonder that ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... answering it. She laughed sardonically as she read. Mrs. Bartlett, confident that Migwan was going to use the reward money to go to college, discussed the merits of different courses, and advised Migwan, above all things, with her talent for writing, to put the emphasis on literature and history. Migwan took a certain grim delight in telling Mrs. Bartlett what had happened to her ambition to go to college. She had a Homeric sense of humor that could see the point when the gods were playing pranks on helpless mortals. ...
— The Camp Fire Girls at School • Hildegard G. Frey
... mistake of underestimating the enemy. For centuries Italy had supplied the Austrian Court with its poets and musicians, until in the Dual Monarchy the Italians were regarded as an effete race, fit only for the politer pursuits of art, literature and song. Italy's successful War of Independence in the latter half of the nineteenth century had not altogether destroyed this impression. This idea, it may be said, was not shared by the Germans, ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... matter if the use of the poor papers were restricted to newspapers and other ephemeral literature, but when, as is often the case, paper of very poor quality is used for books of permanent literary interest, ...
— Bookbinding, and the Care of Books - A handbook for Amateurs, Bookbinders & Librarians • Douglas Cockerell
... to look like flesh and blood, but resembled rather some half-made creature flung on the passive canvas in a liquid state, with its edges running over into the background. There are a good many of these people in literature, too,—heroes who, like home-made paper dolls, do not stand up well; or if they manage to perform that feat, one unexpectedly discovers, when they are placed in a strong light, that they have no vital organs whatever, and can be seen through without the slightest difficulty. ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... literature and might, When Marathon's broad plains saw sword and fight; Thy monumental ruins stand alone, Decay has breathed upon thy sculptured stone And desolation walks thy princely halls, The green branch twines around thy olden walls; And ye who stood the ten years' siege of Troy, ...
— Victor Roy, A Masonic Poem • Harriet Annie Wilkins
... but she had women's clubs in 1881. The chief of these were the Ladies' Literary Club and the Spinsters' Alliance. Both clubs tackled the same great themes of ethics and art, and allotted a winter to the literature of a nation, except in the case of Greek and Roman literatures, which were not considered able to occupy a whole winter apiece, so they were studied in company. The club possessed a proper complement of officers, and their meetings went ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VI. (of X.) • Various
... oldest time men have associated the mountains with visitations of God. Their height, their vastness, their majesty made them seem worthy to be stairs by which the Deity might descend to earth, and they stand in religious and poetic literature to this day as symbols of the largest mental conceptions. Scriptural history is intimately associated with them, and the giving of the law on Sinai, amid thunder and darkness, is one of the most tremendous pictures that imagination ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... the literature of child life is little Remi in Hector Malot's famous masterpiece ...
— Under the Ocean to the South Pole - The Strange Cruise of the Submarine Wonder • Roy Rockwood
... people so close to France, though they made Brussels a little Paris, would not join the French family and enter into the spirit and body of that great civilization on their borders, whose language was that of their own literature. Belgium seemed to have no character. Its nationality was the artificial product of European politics; a buffer divided in itself, which would be neither French, ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... that are shocking to an intelligent thinker, and which no scientist can excuse on the ground of poetical license. "The poetry of this excellent author," says Dana, "is good, but the facts nearly all errors—if literature allows of such an incongruity." Think of coral-animals as being referred to as shapeless worms that "writhe and shrink their tortuous bodies to grotesque dimensions"! These deep-sea builders manufacture or secrete from their own bodies the coral substance ...
— The Human Side of Animals • Royal Dixon
... hour later he was conferring with Jones, the erstwhile elevator boy and rabid proletarian whom Daylight long before had grubstaked to literature for a year. The resulting novel had been a failure. Editors and publishers would not look at it, and now Daylight was using the disgruntled author in a little private secret service system he had been compelled to establish for himself. ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... one of the bunks. A sandy, sawney-looking Bourke native takes great interest in this wreck; watches his every movement as though he never saw a sick man before. The men lie about in the bunks, or the shade of the hut, and rest, and read all the soiled and mutilated scraps of literature they can rake out of the rubbish, and sleep, and wake up swimming in perspiration, and growl ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... cover American history from colonial times to the close of the Civil War. Not all the books are of literary merit; they have been chosen primarily with regard to their historical interest, although many of them are of the first rank as literature. As the list is not exhaustive, many good historical novels have ...
— A Guide to Methods and Observation in History - Studies in High School Observation • Calvin Olin Davis
... describe her would be vain and unsatisfactory. Suffice it to say that she is a pure blonde, with eyes, hair, and skin just to my liking. She is quiet and shy in manner, deliberate in speech, sensitive beyond measure, wise in intuitive judgment, clever in history and literature, but always a little in doubt as to the result of putting seven and eight together, and not unreasonably dominated by the rules of orthography. She is fond of outdoor life, in love with horses and dogs, and withal very much of ...
— The Fat of the Land - The Story of an American Farm • John Williams Streeter
... pageant of American poetry has been so often presented that no necessity exists for another exhaustive review of the art. Nearly all anthologies, however, stop short of the present group of poets, or represent them so inadequately that only those in close touch with the trend of American literature know what the poet of to-day is contributing ...
— The Little Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... Carlyle which of us would ever have heard of Sterling? And even in this comparatively placid book mines of the accustomed vehemence are sprung on the shrinking reader. To the prosaic German, nourished on a literature free from thunderings and any marked acuteness of enthusiasm, Carlyle is ...
— The Solitary Summer • Elizabeth von Arnim
... let you out. I know all about you. You sent a chap here to interview Mr. Crane,—and you're getting follow-up literature." ...
— The Come Back • Carolyn Wells
... the following passage. "And these" Baptism and Church government, "are two of the most important points which separate Christians. Should they separate them? As well might the brothers of a family be separated by the most trifling difference on some question of taste or literature. . . . . . Episcopalians and Presbyterians, Baptists and Paedobaptists, with all others, who differ on obscure and undecided points, ought, if they have one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God, and one hope, under the influence of one Spirit, who sanctifies ...
— On Calvinism • William Hull
... following newspaper supplement printed in Tagalog for the benefit of the common people, is typical of this class of literature, with which the country ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester
... "Dryden," well remarks Campbell, "would have given but a coarse draught of Eloisa's passion." Pope's Epistles, Satires, Imitations, &c., contain much of the most spirited sense and elegant sarcasm in literature. The portraits of "Villars" and "Atticus" will occur to every reader as masterpieces in power, although we deem the latter grossly unjust to a good and great man. His Homer is rather an adaptation than a translation—far less a "transfusion" ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope
... represent the | sovereign. And the significance | which he attaches to the word | 'Hermes' is evident from his | address to King James in the | Introduction to the ADVANCEMENT | OF LEARNING. 'There is met in | your Majesty, says Bacon, 'a | rare conjunction as well of | divine and sacred literature as | of profane and human; so as | your Majesty standeth invested | of that triplicity which in | great veneration was ascribed | to the ancient Hermes; the | power and fortune of a King, | the knowledge and illumination | of a Priest, and the learning | and the ...
— Valerius Terminus: of the Interpretation of Nature • Sir Francis Bacon
... quality of the religious literature! These people are always telling us that the English translated Bible is sufficient training for anyone in noble and appropriate diction; and so it is. Why, then, are they not trained? They are always telling us that Bunyan, the rude Midland tinker, is as much worth reading as Chaucer or Spenser; ...
— Utopia of Usurers and other Essays • G. K. Chesterton
... to state, that the great question respecting the course of the Niger, which has puzzled geography and literature for many centuries, has at last been determined by British courage and perseverance. We have just received the annexed letter from our esteemed and intelligent friend, Mr. Fisher, surgeon of the Atholl, well known to the world for his own interesting ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, - Issue 491, May 28, 1831 • Various
... well known to the student of Italian literature, that the Magician has obtained a niche ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 492 - Vol. 17, No. 492. Saturday, June 4, 1831 • Various
... of Bahr[a]m I. During his reign the emperor Carus attacked the Persians and conquered Ctesiphon (283), but died by the plague. Of Bahr[a]m II.'s reign some theological inscriptions exist (F. Stolze and J. C. Andreas, Persepolis (Berlin, 1882), and E. W. West, "Pahlavi Literature" in Grundriss d. iranischen Philologie, ii. ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... learn," I was naturally much interested. He has a dash of acquired eccentricity of tone and manner, is very proud, but, unlike some proud people, appreciates the co-humanity of his inferiors, is a brilliant talker, dashing over art, literature, politics, society, tells stories brilliantly, never flags, is totally regardless of "the equities of conversation," and is much beloved by the Sikhs, to ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... said, wished to use his intellect, but he did not choose to be a tradesman. His mother rebuked him again, as well he deserved that she should,—and then asked him of what profession he himself had thought. "Philology," said he; "or as a profession, perhaps literature. I shall devote myself to philology and the races of man. Nothing considerable has been done with them as a combined pursuit." And with these views he returned home—while Peregrine Orme at Oxford was still addicted ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... will be to show that the principles on which the version of the New Testament was based have been in no degree affected by the copious literature connected with the language of the Greek Testament and its historical position which has appeared since the Revision was completed. It is only quite lately that the Revisers have been represented as being insufficiently acquainted, in ...
— Addresses on the Revised Version of Holy Scripture • C. J. Ellicott
... Elizabethan tradition, was a student there, and the library has the rare distinction of having possessed longest the same copy of the works of Shakespeare; it still has the second folio, presented in 1638, by one of the fellows. St. John's connection with the lighter side of literature has lasted to our own day; the most famous of Oxford parodies is still the Oxford Spectator, which has not been surpassed by any of its many imitators in the ...
— The Charm of Oxford • J. Wells
... this book is to be sought in the point of view of the writer rather than in a sequence of chapters developing a single theme and arriving at categorical conclusions. Literature in a civilization like ours, which is trying to be both sophisticated and democratic at the same moment of time, has so many sources and so many manifestations, is so much involved with our social background, and is so much a question of life as well as of art, ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... had scarcely become general before it gave a new impulse to genius and a new spirit to inquiry. A singular concurrence of circumstances contributed to multiply the beneficial effects derived from this invention, among which the most considerable were the protection afforded to literature and the arts by the States of Italy, and the diffusion of Greek learning by the literati who sought an asylum in Europe after the ...
— The Author's Printing and Publishing Assistant • Frederick Saunders
... known Austrian sculptor, designed and executed the last mentioned group. The two figures at the left hand end of this group represent Science and Literature, and those at the right hand end, Industry and Commerce. The entire group consists of nine figures, the middle figure being seated and the rest standing, sitting, and lying, as the space ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 492, June 6, 1885 • Various
... tobacco precludes, at least, a date much later. They began to be translated into the languages of Europe during the reign of Queen Anne and, with the exception of the Old Testament, have been the chief orientalizing influence in modern literature. The setting of "Ali Baba" shows the four characteristics of all these Perso-Arabian tales: it has to do with town life, not country life; it presupposes one faith, the Mohammedan; it shows a fondness for magic; and it takes for granted an audience interested not ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith
... Oriental scholar. His official duties had taken him at one time to Yokohama and Tokio and at another to Bagdad, and while at those places he gave a good deal of attention to the languages, literature and arts of the countries. He was also greatly interested in Babylonian and Assyrian archaeology, and I believe he assisted for some time in the ...
— The Mystery of 31 New Inn • R. Austin Freeman
... SCOTSMAN.—'The war literature now includes books of all sorts; but there is nothing in it more racy or readable than this collection of letters, what may be called familiar letters to the general public.... In spite of its subject, there is more fun than anything else in the book.... ...
— A Yeoman's Letters - Third Edition • P. T. Ross
... claims her poet son, the tragedy of whose life is a gloomy, though brilliant, page in the history of American literature. ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... have been made honestly enough; but poverty and wretchedness had left their mark on me, and you will find very few men with a good word to say for Harrison Crockstead. I have no polish, or culture, or tastes. Art wearies me, literature sends me ...
— Five Little Plays • Alfred Sutro
... E. M., The Child and His Book. The history and progress of children's literature in England. ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... to decide, and I might depart immediately; to America, I think. I should engage in science and literature. Mine would be a safe, sure course; but, at the beginning, I might have a hard struggle. I do not like to take any ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... suggests nothing but malady: in Arabic and Persian as in the classic literature of Europe it is the seat of passion, the heart being that of ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... forth to explore the realm of our Ballad Literature needs not to hamper himself with biographical baggage. Whatever misgivings and misadventures may beset him in his wayfaring, there is no risk of breaking neck or limb over dates or names. For of dates and names ...
— The Balladists - Famous Scots Series • John Geddie
... period. As I have elsewhere pointed out,(2) Italy, the centre of western civilization, was at this time impoverished, and hence could not provide the monetary stimulus so essential to artistic and scientific no less than to material progress. There were no patrons of science and literature such as the Ptolemies of that elder Alexandrian day. There were no great libraries; no colleges to supply opportunities and afford stimuli to the rising generation. Worst of all, it became ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... which he is now, and for which he will be longest, famous—namely, his songs. The writer already referred to compares the composition of these songs to the carving of cherry-stones. They were, he says in effect, the amusement of a man who could do nothing better in literature! The world has agreed that they are the best things Burns has done; and rates him for their sake in the highest rank of its poets. The truth is that Burns came to Ellisland with numerous schemes of future poetical work, vigorous hopes of carrying some of them, and an inspiration ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... good my title to be a privileged man, and was carried by him in the evening to drink tea with Miss Williams, whom, though under the misfortune of having lost her sight, I found to be agreeable in conversation; for she had a variety of literature, and expressed herself well; but her peculiar value was the intimacy in which she had long lived with Johnson, by which she was well acquainted with his habits, and knew how to lead him on ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... pretensions to literature. He wrote a treatise on religion, and another on the treaty of Tilsit: in this country he published a pamphlet on the funded system, and a narrative of his life by himself. With a knowledge of the writer, ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... do with the creation and protection of property. Although it is related to literature, architecture, politics, art and the like; even these things if not actually rooted in property are stimulated or affected by property. Civilization has created new crimes and new ways to commit crime. It ...
— Crime: Its Cause and Treatment • Clarence Darrow
... this dedication, for some of the stories were begotten in late gossip by your fireside; and furthermore, my little book is given a kind of distinction, in having on its fore-page the name of one well known as a connoisseur of art and a lover of literature. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... residue that were present, insomuch that they could not tell what to doe, or with what sacrifice to appease the anger of the gods. While every man was thus stroken in feare, behold, one brought word to the good man of the house, that his three sonnes who had been brought up in good literature, and endued with good manners were dead, for they three had great acquaintance and ancient amity with a poore man which was their neighbour, and dwelled hard by them: and next unto him dwelled another young man very rich both ...
— The Golden Asse • Lucius Apuleius
... many readers is this: They read as though they WERE on a desert island. They sop up literature or facts as a sponge sops up water; then, like human sponges, do nothing with their wisdom. They read for themselves; they read to increase their egotism and self-approval, and for ...
— Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers • Arthur Brisbane
... Every one who has visited Naples will remember the church on the Mergellina, dedicated to the Madonna del Parto, where lies, beneath his pagan tomb, the poet Sannazzaro. Mr. Hallam, in a beautiful passage of his "History of the Literature of Europe," has pointed out the influence of the genius of Tasso on the whole school of Bolognese painters of that time. Not less striking was the influence of Sannazzaro and his famous poem on the Nativity ...
— Legends of the Madonna • Mrs. Jameson
... as a class, might be called the Boythorns of Literature. All of them, from Junius down, have shown a great satisfaction in waving a tremendously sharp sword out from behind a fence. Sometimes the hand that has held the weapon was strong enough to have done good service wherever it might have been engaged, but always the wielding ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... Talboys was by no means too learned a gentleman. The pale governess had tried to talk to him about fashionable literature, but George had only pulled his beard and stared very hard at her, saying occasionally, "Ah, yes, by Jove!" and "To be ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... the accomplishments of Sir James Mackintosh is qualified by the remark that "the Greek language has never crossed the Tweed in any great force." In brief, be understood and respected classical scholarship. He was keenly interested in English literature, and kept abreast of what was produced in France; but German he seems to have regarded as a kind of joke, and Italian he only mentions as part of ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... and the Doctor gave a little bow and deprecating smile. "I am not in any way connected with the Church. I am a doctor of laws and literature,—a humble student of philosophy and ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... that is a question easy to answer. Work, write, take the place in scholastic or social literature which I have trained you to fill. For you, fame and fortune lie in an inkstand; your mind is a golden key that will open to your sight all that is worth seeing in the world, and pass you into its most pleasant places. You can ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... can be sent over to the armies, and also give the children a sense of being in the war. Another thing we are trying to do is educate the foreign born and the native born who cannot read or write English. If you are interested in either of these two things we will send you literature, and you can name your own district, and we will put you ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... would have stifled the genius of the Greek people. Self-government would never have had its beginnings in Greece, and a subjugated Athens would never have produced the "Age of Pericles." In the two generations following Salamis, Athens made a greater original contribution to literature, philosophy, science, and art than any other nation in any two centuries of ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... wife and one trusty woman manage dairy and cookery with eminent success, and various sales, while he is cow-milker and gardener, student also of fruit and of the soil. It is to me an interest as a foresight of the future. He is a student of our hardest literature, and employs no labourer under him. Ignorant of foreign tongues, he reads German translations and Jowett's Plato.... A school friend of Mr. Braithwaite lately sought my acquaintance.... He tells me that Mr. Gladstone lately gave to the world the utterance that among the possibilities ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... discussion is idle, but that Hawthorne was the finer genius few would deny. Poe, as cunning an artificer of goldsmith's work and as adroit in its vending as was ever M. Josse, declared that "Hawthorne's distinctive trait is invention, creation, imagination, originality,—a trait which in the literature of fiction is positively worth all the rest." But the moral basis of Hawthorne's work, which had flowered in the crevices and crannies of New-England Puritanism, Poe did not concern himself with. In Poe's hands the story of "The Ambitious Guest" might have thrilled us with ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various
... literary taste as an elegant accomplishment, by acquiring which they will complete themselves, and make themselves finally fit as members of a correct society. They are secretly ashamed of their ignorance of literature, in the same way as they would be ashamed of their ignorance of etiquette at a high entertainment, or of their inability to ride a horse if suddenly called upon to do so. There are certain things that a man ought to know, or to know about, and ...
— Literary Taste: How to Form It • Arnold Bennett
... to New Orleans to join the editorial staff of the "Times-Democrat." Here he lived until 1887, writing odd fantasies and arabesques for his paper, contributing articles and sketches to the magazines, and publishing several curious little books, among them his "Stray Leaves from Strange Literature," and his translations from Gautier. In the winter of 1887 he began his pilgrimages to exotic countries, being, as he wrote to a friend, "a small literary bee in search of inspiring honey." After a couple of years, spent chiefly in the French West Indies, with periods ...
— The Romance of the Milky Way - And Other Studies & Stories • Lafcadio Hearn
... and to think I am twenty-four, and known in literature! In my long walks I have composed to a tune (I don't know what it is) which all the people are singing and whistling in the street at present, a poem in frightful Italian, beginning "Medea, mia dea," calling on her in the name of her various lovers. I go about ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... altogether unreal, ground of confidence, that the examiner himself might be uneasily conscious of the ever-present possibility that some hidden Hebrew snag might rudely jag a hole in his own vessel while sailing the mare ignotum of oriental literature. Of course, the examination would also include other departments of sacred learning, for it was the province and duty of Presbytery to satisfy itself as to the soundness in the faith of the candidates before them. ...
— The Doctor - A Tale Of The Rockies • Ralph Connor
... from politics and literature to the ball to which my hostess, her husband, and we as their guests have been invited at a friend's house. She intends to go earlier; he and we are to follow later in the evening, for that evening his 'Krans' is to meet at his house, and it will keep us till eleven o'clock. A 'Krans' is simply ...
— Dutch Life in Town and Country • P. M. Hough
... less persuaded that you will agree with me in opinion that there is nothing which can better deserve your patronage than the promotion of science and literature. Knowledge is in every country the surest basis of public happiness. In one in which the measures of government receive their impressions so immediately from the sense of the community as in ours it is ...
— State of the Union Addresses of George Washington • George Washington
... was a man of cultivated mind and very refined and fastidious taste. He lived for the pleasures of art and literature, and the society where these are valued. For this, and not without some secret love of display, he lived in Paris; not extravagant in his pleasures, nor silly in his ostentation, but leading, like a gentleman, as worthy and rational a life as a man can ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... to exercise their powers. The mist was turned into a benevolent system of rivers and canals, and iron, rice and the silk-worm then appeared. Next, heroes and champions, whose names have been preserved, arose. They fought the giants and an era of literature and peaceful tranquillity set in. After this there was the Great Invasion from the north, but the people rallied and by means of a war lasting five years, five moons and five days the land was freed again. This prefaced the Golden Age when chess was invented, printed ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... I, with the certificate in my hand, “I was married to this girl by Black Jack the negro. The certificate was wrote by Case, and it’s a dandy piece of literature, I promise you. Since then I’ve found that there’s a kind of cry in the place against this wife of mine, and so long as I keep her I cannot trade. Now, what would any man do in my place, if he was a man?” I said. “The first thing he would do is this, I guess.” And I took ...
— Island Nights' Entertainments • Robert Louis Stevenson
... in the old-fashioned way, you will have to place yourself at the disposal of the chairman of some campaign committee in the city; you will read a great deal of 'literature' prepared by the committee, mostly vituperative nonsense about the opposing party; you will learn this by heart, follow the red light and the brass band to the nearest 'stump,' and mixing what you have read, but not thought out, with ...
— A Woman for Mayor - A Novel of To-day • Helen M. Winslow
... Principal Robertson (with him and Hume, Gibbon professed, very modestly, that he did not rank); the times of Adam Smith, of Burns, and of Sir Walter, not to speak of the Rev. John Home, that foremost tragic poet, may be studied in many a history of literature. According to Voltaire, Scotland led the world in all studies, from metaphysics to gardening. We think of ...
— A Short History of Scotland • Andrew Lang
... sermons, of pious exercises, or of prayers. Whatever inculcates pure, noble, and patriotic sentiments, or touches the heart with the beauty of virtue, and the excellence of an upright life, accords with the religion of Masonry, and is the Gospel of literature and art. That Gospel is preached from many a book and painting, from many a poem and fiction, and review and newspaper; and it is a painful error and miserable narrowness, not to recognize these wide-spread agencies of Heaven's providing; not to see and welcome ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... thought I would make a display of my knowledge of literature, particularly French literature, and so led the conversation to that theme. Judge, then, of my surprise when I discovered that not only had my companions been reading the foreign passages in Russian, but that they had studied far more foreign works than I had, and knew and could appraise English, ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... historical literature when correctly presented by authors with text containing these patronymics with the abbreviation point added, have simply removed the points arguing that this 'full stop' in the middle of sentences is confusing for the English reader, thereby ...
— The Part Borne by the Dutch in the Discovery of Australia 1606-1765 • J. E. Heeres
... Evening Journal are the most sensational, humorous additions to the present era of American literature. Recognized among humorous writers of the country as the "greatest giggle generator," "the liveliest laugh laureate" and "the champion chuckle cannonader." Medbury's humor, under the title of "Maybe I'm Wrong," appears in the New York ...
— What's in the New York Evening Journal - America's Greatest Evening Newspaper • New York Evening Journal
... of the effects of the literature that paints contradiction as truth. It is only skin deep, and makes me wish all the more to have her with my uncle for a time. I wonder whether Grace would let me in ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge |
