"Pedantic" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the definitions themselves an attempt has been made to use such words as note, tone, et cetera with at least a fair degree of accuracy, and while the attitude of the author on this point may be criticized as being puristic and pedantic, it is nevertheless his opinion that the next generation of music students and teachers will be profited by a more accurate use of certain terms that have been inaccurately used for so long that the present generation has to a large extent lost sight of the fact that the use ...
— Music Notation and Terminology • Karl W. Gehrkens
... rule which I have tried to follow has been this: when the word has been hopelessly Latinised, as 'Phoebus' has been, I have left it as it usually stands; but in other cases I have tried to keep the plain Greek spelling, except when it would have seemed pedantic, or when, as in the word 'Tiphus,' I should have given an altogether wrong notion of the sound of the word. It has been a choice of difficulties, which has been forced on me by our strange habit of introducing boys to the Greek myths, not in ...
— The Heroes • Charles Kingsley
... Renaissance,[263] but even this long step in advance did not immediately liberate the art from bondage. A new generation of professors arose who added fresh material to the storehouses, already overflowing, of pedantic erudition, and showed the utmost contempt for any fruit of other men's labour which might not square exactly with the utterances of the founders. This attitude rendered these professors of Medicine the legitimate objects of ridicule, as soon as the leaven of the revival ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... well as in religion. Ulster was 'planted' with Englishmen and Lowland Scots. In the midst of all these changes the great Queen, grown old and very lonely, died in 1603; and with her ended the glorious Tudor dynasty of England. James, pusillanimous and pedantic son of Darnley and Mary Queen of Scots, ascended the throne as the first of the sinister Stuarts, and, truckling to vindictive Spain, threw Raleigh into prison under ...
— Elizabethan Sea Dogs • William Wood
... reference,—far from it,—to women, to love, or to friends, things where the pedantic and ostentatious scepticism of literary men of the Larra type usually finds its fodder; his nihilism was much more the confusion and discomposure of one that explores a region well or badly, and finds no landmarks there, no paths, ...
— Caesar or Nothing • Pio Baroja Baroja
... of dishonesty or corruption. But his excellences were not of the retiring sort. He carried them written upon him in letters for all to read, as a testimony to a wicked generation. His opinions were as pedantic as his life was abstemious, and no one was permitted to differ from him without being held guilty rather of a crime than of a mistake. He was an aristocratic pedant, to whom the living forces of humanity seemed but irrational impulses of which he and such ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... be taken for the greatest praise of all."[350] In Grimald's insistence on a brevity equal to that of the original and in his unmodified opposition to innovations in vocabulary, there is something of pedantic narrowness. His criticism of Cicero is not illuminating and his estimate, in this connection, of his own accomplishment is amusingly complacent. In Cicero's work "marvellous is the matter, flowing the ...
— Early Theories of Translation • Flora Ross Amos
... be observed by the sagacious student of the entire Essays, that however quaint or familiar, or (rarely, however) sprinkled with classical allusions, they are never vulgar, nor commonplace, nor pedantic. They are "natural with a self-pleasing quaintness." The phrases are not affected, but are derived from our ancestors, now gone to another country; they are brought back from the land of shadows, and ...
— Charles Lamb • Barry Cornwall
... For instance,—to express woods, not on a plain, but clothing a hill, which overlooks a valley, or dell, or river, or the sea,—the trees rising one above another, as the spectators in an ancient theatre,—I know no other word in our language (bookish and pedantic terms out of the question), but hanging woods, the sylvae superimpendentes of Catullus; yet let some wit call out in a slang tone,—"the gallows!" and a peal of laughter would damn the play. Hence it ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... trace the idea of internal secretion by cells to an individual, it is convenient, if not pedantic, to give the credit to Theophile de Bordeu, a famous physician of Paris in the eighteenth century. Bordeu came to Paris as a brilliant provincial in his early twenties and by the charm of his manner and daring therapy fought his way to the most exclusive aristocratic practice of the court. ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... understand the subject anyhow; so that even now as I write in cool blood I am tempted to think that I acted quite correctly. I was acting for the larger truth, at any rate, however automatically; and my sense of this was probably what prevented the more pedantic and literal part of my conscience from checking the action of my sympathetic finger. To this day the memory of that critical emergency has made me feel charitable towards all mediums who make phenomena come in one way when they won't come easily in another. On the principles ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... overwhelmed me; I would gladly have read, as he did, everything that had been written before my time; but there were authors who wearied me, and I confess that at that age Linnaeus was among the number. I found him dry, pedantic, dogmatic, conceited; while I was charmed with Aristotle, whose zoology I have read and re-read ever since at intervals of two or three years. I must, however, do myself the justice to add, that after I knew more of the history of our science I learned also ...
— Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence • Louis Agassiz
... falsehoods of that reverend mummer, who is neither true priest nor true soldier. But I will fetch one who shall confront him either in casque or cowl." So saying, she went hastily out of the chapel, while the monk, after some pedantic circumlocution, acquainted the Lady Eveline with what he had overheard betwixt Jorworth and Wilkin; and proposed to her to draw together the few English who were in the castle, and take possession of the innermost square tower; a keep which, ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... "All right, Mr. Pedantic Philosopher. Maybe you're telling the truth. But look, I don't think we're going into Gettysburg in such a great hurry! Yankee soldiers are ...
— The Star of Gettysburg - A Story of Southern High Tide • Joseph A. Altsheler
... to be perpetually haunted by the plush behind your chair is hardly a sign of lofty literary and moral genius; and they consider him narrow and vulgar in his view of humanity, limited in his outlook upon life, inclined to be envious, inclined to be tedious and pedantic, prone to repetitions, and apt in bidding for applause to appeal to the baser qualities of his readers and to catch their sympathy by making them feel themselves spitefully superior to their fellow-men. They look at his favourite ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... a somewhat pedantic visitor told Billy that he would never be a great man if he did not try to understand the book in question—to ...
— The Young Trawler • R.M. Ballantyne
... young, and misleading influence upon all, but it actually leads to false views of life, and an unsound philosophy such as transcendental idealism, pessimism, indolence, and the pursuit of visionary falsehoods which a well-balanced mind would intuitively reject. These follies are cultivated by a pedantic system of education, and by the accumulated literature which such education in the past has developed, feeble and faulty in style, superficial in conception, and sadly misleading as to the principles and purposes ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, August 1887 - Volume 1, Number 7 • Various
... now to the second of the questions above propounded, which I will state more definitely in this form: Is "psychology" simply a more pedantic term for "character-drawing"? Or can we establish a distinction between the two ideas? I do not think that, as a matter of fact, any difference is generally and clearly recognized; but I suggest that it is possible to draw a distinction ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... that, in case the Republic did not speedily obey these orders, the Pope would excommunicate its leaders and lay an interdict upon its people. It was indeed a serious contingency. For many years the new Pope had been known as a hard, pedantic ecclesiastical lawyer, and now that he had arrived at the supreme power, he had evidently determined to enforce the high mediaeval supremacy of the Church over the State. Everything betokened his success. In France he had ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... even when his own relatives rise in arms against the queen's brother who has insulted Bancbanus' wife and, they think, has killed her. We have to do, however, not merely with a brilliant example of unselfish loyalty; we have a highly special case of individualized persons. Bancbanus is a little, pedantic old man, almost ridiculous in his personal appearance and in his over-conscientiousness. Erny, his wife, is a childlike creature, not displeased by flattery, too innocent to be circumspect, but faithful unto death. And Otto von Meran, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... people that will be like to put you to death for not being a vagrant, for not being a robber, for not being armed and houseless. There is comfort in that—health, comfort, and strength to one who is dying from very weariness of that poor, dear, middle-aged, deserving, accomplished, pedantic, and painstaking ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... and hence free to adopt whatever name he chose; his associates and admiring disciples paid him the homage of imitation, proud to associate themselves, by means of this pedantic fancy, with him they called master. The Florentine, Buonacorsi, took the name of Callimachus Experiens; the Roman, Marco, masqueraded as Asclepiades; two Venetian brothers gladly exchanged honest, vulgar Piscina for the signature ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt
... ultramarine, sky-colored; livid, ecchymosed; rigorous, severe; (Colloq.) melancholy, downhearted, depressed, despondent, dejected, low-spirited, dispirited, hypochondriac, chapfallen, gloomy, (Colloq.) gloomy, inauspicious, dismal, depressing; (Colloq.) pedantic, literary. ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... The background of his story, the scenes of which are laid in and around Colchester a year or so ago, is composed of gardens and oyster-beds. On these he gives a lot of information, and, as he could not be pedantic even if he tried to be, I browsed pleasantly upon the store of knowledge set before me. Also I liked the restraint he shows in dealing with the War, and commend his exemplary method to some of our more blatant ...
— Punch, 1917.07.04, Vol. 153, Issue No. 1 • Various
... idols of the race and of the market, of the study and of the theatre. Every national prejudice, every vulgar superstition, every remnant of pedantic system, every sentimental like or dislike, must be left behind you, for the induction of the world problem. You must empty yourself before ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... Court of Common Pleas, "fatigued," as Lord Campbell has it, "if not satiated, with amassing money at the bar." The new judge was as fully alive to the rights of his office as he had been before to the prerogatives of the king. The pedantic presumption of James was safe till it rubbed against the more stubborn pride of Coke. The monarch was of opinion that the constitution and the law allowed him personally to try causes between his loyal subjects. "By my ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... short, I say—I'll have no adventurers, who live by their wits, making up to my daughter—pedantic puppies, good for ushers, nothing else. What do they mean by ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... language, at least; this was the case for the prosecution, stripped of all pedantic juggling; and Raleigh now drew himself together to confute these charges as best he might. 'Let me answer,' he said; 'it concerns my life;' and from this point onwards, as Mr. Edwards remarks, the trial becomes a long ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... Chapel dates from Tudor times, it must be remembered that its interior was rearranged and redecorated in the reign of Queen Anne, and that those responsible for the work were by no means hampered by any pedantic ideas of congruity. A matter of grievance to many visitors is that the Chapel is not thrown open to the public. It can only be seen ...
— Hampton Court • Walter Jerrold
... "presenting of compliments," a social note, no matter what its length or purport, would have been considered rude, unless written in the third person. But as in a communication of any length the difficulty of this form is almost insurmountable (to say nothing of the pedantic effect of its accomplishment), it is no longer chosen—aside from the formal invitation, acceptance and regret—except for notes to ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... Taillandier is as asininely pedantic as the Revue. Aren't they prudish in that set? I am in a pet with Girardin. I know very well that I am not strong in letters; I am not sufficiently cultivated for these gentlemen; but the good public reads me and listens to ...
— The George Sand-Gustave Flaubert Letters • George Sand, Gustave Flaubert
... the office in the shire of—at the time of this catastrophe, was well born and well educated; and, though somewhat pedantic and professional in his habits, he enjoyed general respect as an active and intelligent magistrate. His first employment was to examine all witnesses whose evidence could throw light upon this mysterious event, and make up ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... have already observed, is neither a love for the whole human race, nor a love for each individual of it, but a love for the race, or for the ideal of man, in each individual. In other and less pedantic words, he who is truly humane considers every human being as such interesting and important, and without waiting to criticise each individual specimen, pays in advance to all alike the tribute of good wishes and sympathy. Now this favourable presumption with regard to human beings ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... are exactly as I wrote them, and I trust the reader will not think that I could now be guilty of such a line, as "To expedite your flame," or of the pedantic school-boyism of calling a housekeeper "nymph." In fact, it is by the merest accident that I am now enabled to give them in their genuine shape. An old school-fellow, whom I have not seen since the days of syntax, and whose name I had utterly forgotten, ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... the world were to her familiar. She had been educated by the philosophers, who had brought from Greece the science of Pythagoras and Plato. Her companions had been men—not women, or nurses, or pious, pedantic priests. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... contradictory creeds for which men have died are all true. Perhaps humor—your right Hegelian touchstone to which everything yields up its latent negation, passing on to its own contradiction—gives truer lights and shades than your pedantic Philistinism. Is Truth really in the cold white light, or in the shimmering interplay of the rainbow tints that fuse in it? Bah! Your Philistine critic will sum me up after I am dead in a phrase; or he will ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... which he had himself failed through the defects of his temperament. Directly and indirectly, he himself took in hand his son's instruction, but without appreciation or consideration of the affinities of a mind with precociously developed instincts. The natural result of the father's pedantic solicitude was that his son came to see in him the schoolmaster rather than the parent. Knowledge in abundance was conveyed, but of the moulding influence of parental sympathy there was none. What dubious consequences followed from ...
— The Youth of Goethe • Peter Hume Brown
... been observed, speaks of his "puns," in conversation. It is not certain, but that, to a reader now, these very things constitute a redeeming attraction of his writings and relieve the mind of the unpleasant effects of his credulity and vanity, pedantic and often far-fetched references, palpable absurdities, and, sometimes, the repulsiveness of his ...
— Salem Witchcraft and Cotton Mather - A Reply • Charles W. Upham
... this young girl, by the betrayal of such ignorance, made herself in conversation with a cultured young gentleman whose good opinion she was most anxious to win. And yet, to talk too much about books is not well; it often marks the pedantic and egotistic character. It is safe to say that unless one happens to meet a very congenial mind among conversers in general society, to introduce the subject of books is liable to be misconstrued. It is not very ...
— Letters to a Daughter and A Little Sermon to School Girls • Helen Ekin Starrett
... to your birthplace, the village of Boberow; where, among the farmers, you again found your own playmates, one of whom was now become the bailiff of the place. On your asking them whether they knew you, one and all of them answered so heartily, "O, yes, yes—why, your are Master Frederic." The pedantic school-master, you will remember, was not so frank. He expressed himself in the stiff town phrase of, "He had not the honour of knowing you, as during your residence in that village, when a child, he had not ...
— Travels in England in 1782 • Charles P. Moritz
... neutrality, but must ultimately become the prey of the victor, and be punished like the Alban Metius, whom Tullus Hostilius caused to be torn asunder by horses that pulled his limbs in different directions. The pedantic epistle ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... be the best, nor the ultimate philosophy, but it is a philosophy, and one of which we may some day feel the want. I read the stilted criticisms, the pedantic carpings of some modern men who cannot write their own language, and I gather that Dumas is out of date. There is a new philosophy of doubts and delicacies, of dallyings and refinements, of half-hearted lookers-on, desiring and fearing some new order ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang
... the painfull schoolmaster, and more fully in the book called, 'Ludus Literarius, or the Grammar school, chap. 8.'" Notwithstanding a title so pretentious, it contains a translation of no more than the first 567 lines of the first Book, executed in a fanciful and pedantic manner; and its rarity is now the only merit of the volume. A literal interlinear translation of the first Book "on the plan recommended by Mr. Locke," was published in 1839, which had been already ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso
... we turn over the pages of the Misogallo, and collate with its epigrams a certain passage in Alfieri's memoirs and letters, that when we meet it in this particular man, in this hard, savage, narrow, pedantic doctrinaire, whose very magnanimity is vanity and egotism, we can no longer sympathise with the hatred of the French, which in juster and more modest men, as for instance Carlo Botta, invariably elicits ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... popular professors who dispensed easy epigrams and thimblefuls of Chartreuse to groups of admirers every night. He was disappointed, too, at the air of general uncertainty on every subject that seemed linked with the pedantic temperament; his opinions took shape in a miniature satire called "In a Lecture-Room," which he persuaded Tom to print ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... should perhaps be made for retaining the popular title of one of the illustrations. The learned are, we believe, agreed that the statue known as the "Dying Gladiator" does not represent a gladiator at all. Yet it seemed pedantic, in view of Byron's famous description, to let it ...
— Roman life in the days of Cicero • Alfred J[ohn] Church
... to sell the said 'coffee bery' in small cups at his own establishment in Devereux Court, Strand. Some two years later we have news of 'Will's,' the most famous, perhaps, of the coffee-houses. Here Dryden held forth with pedantic vanity: and here was laid the first germ of that critical acumen which has since become a distinguishing feature in English literature. Then, in the City, one Garraway, of Exchange Alley, first sold 'tea in leaf and drink, ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... art. He is always at the boarding-house, and if his remarks sometimes shoot over the heads of his auditors, this is only because he intends that they should. The first ten or fifteen pages of the "Autocrat" are written in such a cold, formal and pedantic manner that the wonder is that Lowell should have published it. After that the style suddenly changes and the Doctor becomes himself. It is like a convention call which ends ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns
... might be forgiven on the plea that where so many names of the strong and powerful bid for recognition, a good way to avoid jealousies, is to ignore them all. So speaks proud and pious Philadelphia—snug, smug, prosperous, priggish and pedantic Philadelphia. But how about these five supremely great names—William Penn, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Paine, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard
... the better consciousness and reason, if the individual decides for reason, should it be theoretical reason, he becomes a narrow, pedantic philistine; should it ...
— The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... 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 that a ray of light from its surface shall pleasantly illumine a feature of the parable that was lying in the shade, and all another thing to make the ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... without. The fact of my going frequently to his house, and taking part in the conversation of himself and the many friends with whom he made me acquainted, gave me a considerable facility in talking the language, from having gained a knowledge of it in this way in place of from a pedantic teacher, whose purisms were quite thrown away on one whose wish it was to speak it fluently, although it might be ...
— Recollections of Manilla and the Philippines - During 1848, 1849 and 1850 • Robert Mac Micking
... the necessity of frequent practice. Still it was from an imperfect recollection of what he had acquired during this pacific period, that he drew his sources of conversation when in company with women; in other words, his language became pedantic when it ...
— A Legend of Montrose • Sir Walter Scott
... knack of looking and talking sentiment, he had no strongly-marked taste or hobby: danced respectably, but not often; knew enough about horses to pick out a good one when he wanted a mount for a riding-party; drank good wine habitually, without being pedantic about the different brands of it; and read enough of the current literature of the day to be able to keep up a conversation if he fell among a literary circle. He was not a marrying man, partly because his income, sufficient to provide him with all bachelor luxuries, was not large enough ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... died out. The pedantic rigour of Byzantine scholarship was little favourable to the poetry of emotion, and the spoken language had now fallen so far apart from the literary idiom that only scholars were capable of writing in the old classical forms. ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
... we remember the men and the age from which it comes, tempts one to form such a conception of Cartwright as, indeed, the portrait prefixed to his works (ed. 1651) gives us; the offspring of an over-educated and pedantic age, highly stored with everything but strength and simplicity; one in whom genius has been rather shaped (perhaps cramped) than developed: but genius was present, without a doubt, under whatsoever artificial ...
— Plays and Puritans - from "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley
... finer than some of his sermons. They are free, to an astonishing degree, from the besetting vices of his age—vulgarity, and quaintness, and affected learning; and he was one of the first English preachers who, without submitting to the trammels of a pedantic logic, conveyed in language nervous, pure, and beautiful, the most convincing arguments in the most lucid order, and made them the ground-work of fervent and impassioned ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 73, March 22, 1851 • Various
... foremost, because the earliest of our acquaintance) the Baron of Bradwardine, stately, kind-hearted, whimsical, pedantic; and Flora MacIvor (whom even we forgive for her Jacobitism), the fierce Vich Ian Vohr, and Evan Dhu, constant in death, and Davie Gellatly roasting his eggs or turning his rhymes with restless volubility, and the two ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... one of his most delightful moods, says somewhere that the best characteristicon of a man is how he wears his hat. If he wears it perpendicular, he is honest, pedantic and boresome. If he wears it tipped slightly, he belongs to the best and most interesting people, is nimble-witted and pleasant. A deeply tipped hat indicates frivolity and obstinate imperious nature. A hat worn on the back of the head signifies improvidence, ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... that, as he went, he turned from time to time quick, scrutinising glances at Ron's face, as though trying to satisfy a doubt, and classify him in his own mind. Evidently the lad's serious, somewhat pedantic manner of replying had invested him with a new interest, but when he spoke again it was only in reference ...
— Big Game - A Story for Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... Let no pedantic fools be there; For ever be those fops abolished, With heads as wooden as thy ware, And, heaven knows! not half ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... Carry their weight; show fair, like Deeds enroll'd; Not Writs, that are first made and after filed. Thence first came up the title of Blank Verse;— You know, sir, what Blank signifies;—when the sense, First framed, is tied with adjectives like points, Hang 't, 'tis pedantic vulgar poetry. Let children, when they versify, stick here And there, these piddling words for want of matter. Poets write ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... the Catholic faith, Dutch painters painted like Belgian painters; they studied in Belgium, Germany, and Italy; Heemskerk imitated Michael Angelo; Bloemart followed Correggio, and "Il Moro" copied Titian, not to indicate others; and they were one and all pedantic imitators, who added to the exaggerations of the Italian style a certain German coarseness, the result of which was a bastard style of painting, still inferior to the first, childish, stiff in design, crude in color, and completely wanting in chiaroscuro, but not, at least, a servile imitation, ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various
... all its parts divide heresy from orthodoxy by too sharp a line. There must be left over and above the propositions to be subscribed, ubique, semper, et ab omnibus, another realm into which the stifled soul may escape from pedantic scruples and indulge its own faith at its own risks; and all that can here be done will be to mark out distinctly the questions which fall within ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... alike, that the same treatment and the same drugs will not always answer; and then you will understand what a difference there is between refusing and being unable. Pray bear with me while I generalize a little, without condemning my disquisition as pedantic, ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... been watching, once, during some brief argument, to see whether she would take her forefinger out of her Murray, into which she had inserted it to keep a certain page. It would have been hard to say why this point interested him, for he had not the slightest real apprehension that she was dry or pedantic. The simple human truth was, the poor fellow was jealous of science. In preaching science to her, he had over-estimated his powers of self-effacement. Suddenly, sinking science for the moment, she looked at him very frankly and began to frown. At the same time she let ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... Pedantic critics may find fault with my modest productions, and perhaps justly, in regard to grammatical construction, and mechanical arrangement, but I shall be satisfied, if the public discern a vein of true poetry glittering here and there ...
— Canada and Other Poems • T.F. Young
... towards the Middle of the Seventeenth Century," I read with great pleasure in the "Neue Zeitschrift." It is a pleasant, lively sketch, spiced with learning but without pedantic lead. Did a very remarkable "History of the Pianoforte," etc., by the same author, appear in your paper? Frau von Bulow wrote to me lately that Hans is busy with some essays for the N. Z. Probably he is writing a review of Weitzmann's "History of the Pianoforte," which would be ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 2: "From Rome to the End" • Franz Liszt; letters collected by La Mara and translated
... mornings; let it be in a consistent and consecutive course, and not in that desultory and unmethodical manner, in which many people read scraps of different authors, upon different subjects. Keep a useful and short commonplace book of what you read, to help your memory only, and not for pedantic quotations. Never read history without having maps and a chronological book, or tables, lying by you, and constantly recurred to; without which history is only a confused heap of facts. One method more I recommend to you, by which I ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... reporter he was absolutely a total loss; for, as already set forth in some detail, he was hopelessly old-fashioned in thought and speech—hopelessly old-fashioned and pedantic in his style of writing; and since his mind mainly concerned itself with retrospections upon the things that happened between April, 1861, and May, 1865, he very naturally—and very frequently—forgot that to a newspaper reporter every day is a new day and a new beginning, and that yesterday ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... John Evelyn, author of "Sylva," &c., now first published from the original MS. in the Library at Wotton, with notes by the Rev. R.M. Evanson, is among the books announced by Colburn, for the first of July. The journals, in anticipation, express some curiosity upon the subject, whether it be pedantic, orthodox, and trimming, like the author, or whether it contain any of the Chubb and Toland spirit. Two new and important works, ethically related to this, have just been issued; the one in France, called ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Of Literature, Art, and Science - Vol. I., July 22, 1850. No. 4. • Various
... prince, bitterly, "that I am free to wander through the stupid streets of Potsdam; appear at his table; that my clothes may be soiled by his unbearable four-legged friends, and my ears deafened by the dull, pedantic conversation of his ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... result of Browning's education was that at the age of twenty he knew more than most college graduates ever know; and his knowledge was at his full command. His favorite reading on the train, for example, was a Greek play; one of the reasons why his poetry sometimes seems so pedantic is simply because he never realised how ignorant most of us really are. I suppose he did not believe that men could pass years in school and university training and know so little. Yet the truth is, that most boys, brought up as Browning was, would be utterly unfitted for the active ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps
... nobility is essential to goodness. We are told indeed, that Good is to be found in virtue, in knowledge, in art, in love. I will not dispute it; but we must add that only a noble man can be virtuous greatly, know wisely, perceive and feel finely. And virtue that is mean, knowledge that is pedantic, art that is base, love that is sensual are not Goods at all. A noble man of necessity feels and expresses himself nobly. His speech is literature, his gesture art, his action drama, his affections music. ...
— A Modern Symposium • G. Lowes Dickinson
... are ignorant of the actual office of this excellent minister, whom Julian afterwards created praefect of Gaul. Sallust was speedly recalled by the jealousy of the emperor; and we may still read a sensible but pedantic discourse, (p. 240-252,) in which Julian deplores the loss of so valuable a friend, to whom he acknowledges himself indebted for his reputation. See La Bleterie, Preface a la Vie de ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... happiest choice of words, and a natural and never-failing humour, as genial as it was pungent. It was his characteristic glory that he knew how to be a man of the world without being frivolous, and a man of letters without being pedantic. ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... touch, and issued a series of ponderous historical treatises, enlargements of his old "Statesmen." These were dreary things, pedantic, solemn and heavy; they might have been by the worthy Rollin himself. Such was the Life of Sir John Eliot, the Arrest of the Five Members, ...
— John Forster • Percy Hethrington Fitzgerald
... ought to know) our Prayer-Books. They had studied the history of Germany, and mastered the intricacies alike of the Thirty Years' War and of the Hohenzollern pedigree; and they talked well, expressing their ideas in good Saxon words; at times, perhaps a trifle pedantic, but never offensively so. ...
— A War-time Journal, Germany 1914 and German Travel Notes • Harriet Julia Jephson
... Stanyhurst wrote a Description, as well as a portion of the History, of Ireland for Holinshed's Chronicles, published in 1577. He also translated (1582) the first four books of Virgil his Aeneis into quantitative hexameters, on the unsound pedantic principles which Gabriel Harvey was at that time trying so hard to establish in English prosody; but the experiment, which turned out so badly in the master's hands, fared even worse in those of the disciple, ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... at criticism, and that was a sure sign that the creative faculty had begun to wither. His critical essays were not rich nor abundant in thought, they were not the skirmishing of a man fighting for his ideas, they were not preliminary to a great battle; they were at once vague and pedantic, somewhat futile, les bats d'un esprit en peine, and seemed to announce a talent in progress of disintegration rather than ...
— Vain Fortune • George Moore
... that it's wrong, that the first line is a syllable short, and that Triboulet said 'colere' instead of amour. You always were a dry-as-dust, pedantic prig. But I say amour-love, do you hear? I'll ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... your wife asks you for a book. This will be easy. You will first of all pronounce in a tone of disdain the phrase "Blue stocking;" and, on her request being repeated, you will tell her what ridicule attaches, among the neighbors, to pedantic women. ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part II. • Honore de Balzac
... dignified, made him a ludicrous figure, which his contemporaries never tired of ridiculing and caricaturing. Henderson, the actor, said that "Akenside, when he walked the streets, looked for all the world like one of his own Alexandrines set upright." Smollett even used him as a model for the pedantic doctor in 'Peregrine Pickle,' who gives a dinner in the fashion of the ancients, and dresses each dish according to ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... at once in line of battle ahead close to the wind,—the fighting order.[42] Both fleets were irregularly formed, the British especially so; for Keppel rightly considered that he would not accomplish his purpose, if he were pedantic concerning the order of his going. He had therefore signalled a "General Chase," which, by permitting much individual freedom of movement, facilitated the progress of the whole body. At daylight, ...
— The Major Operations of the Navies in the War of American Independence • A. T. Mahan
... things I at once grappled, and immediately "conditioned'' in these studies about nine tenths of the entering class. At first there were many protests; but I said to my ingenuous youths that no pedantic study was needed, that all I required was a preparation such as would enable any one of them to read intelligently his morning newspaper, and to this end I advised each one of them to accept his conditions, to abjure all learning by rote ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... ashamed. Good men acting in an exemplary way are not commended by other good men; nor are bad men acting in a contrary way praised by their wicked compeers; and friends are not agreeable to friends, albeit endowed with high qualities; and foolish pedantic men cry down the virtues of their preceptors. This reversal of the natural order of things, O good Brahmana, is seen everywhere in this world. What is thy opinion as to the virtuousness or otherwise of this state of things? There is much that can be said of the goodness or badness of our actions. ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... have anything more to say to you to-day; indeed, I know that you would be the last to desire that the writing of this letter should he in any way irksome to me. Besides, it is five o'clock P.M. My arm-chair invites me. I feel tired, and, that being so, I am convinced it would he an act of pedantic folly to deny myself the sweet refreshment of half-an-hour's sleep. Farewell, kindly one. I shall always rejoice to honour ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, December 12, 1891 • Various
... many instances of compunction you have seen. I am ready to take your bare word for it. Compunction! Have you ever seen as much as its shadow? Have you ever? Just a shadow—a passing shadow! I tell you it is so rare that you may call it non-existent. They are too passionate. Too pedantic. Too courageous with themselves—perhaps. No I don't think for a moment that Mrs. Fyne felt the slightest compunction at her treatment of her sea-going brother. What he thought of it who can tell? It is possible that he wondered why he had been so insistently urged to come. It is possible ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... arrangement. The law is very lenient to those who can pay for the best arrangements for circumventing the law's intentions, but even in spite of the recent concessions, is still hard on the ignorant poor and low class. The law is a snob as well as a pedantic, pompous ass. ...
— Women's Wild Oats - Essays on the Re-fixing of Moral Standards • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... of the Eighteenth Century witnessed a weakening of both sides through compromise. The schools and colleges were pedantic, complacent, smug and self-satisfied; by giving in a few points they had absorbed the radicals, and the political protesters had been bought off with snug places in the excise. Pretended knowledge ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... theory, has probably done more irreparable injury to our ancient buildings than even the iconoclasts of the Reformation. A shattered ruin may convey a clear idea of its original state, while a smooth, pedantic restoration will ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Salisbury - A Description of its Fabric and a Brief History of the See of Sarum • Gleeson White
... driven off the field of argument, and baffled in their attempt to find ground for laying an information against Him. But neither His gentle wisdom nor His healing power could reach these hearts, made stony by conceit and pedantic formalism; and all that their contact with Jesus did was to drive them to intenser hostility, and to send them away to plot His death. That is what comes of making religion a round of outward observances. The Pharisee is always blind as an owl to the light of God ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... scholar also; he is anxious about orthography, about the letter e Grecque, the true spelling of Latin names in French writing, and the restoration of the letter i to its primitive liberty—del' i voyelle en sa premiere liberte. His poetry is full of quaint, remote learning. He is just a little pedantic, true always to his own express judgment, that to be natural is not enough for one who in poetry desires to produce work worthy of immortality. And therewithal a certain number of Greek words, which charmed Ronsard and his circle by their ...
— The Renaissance - Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Pater
... answer. By the design, the subject, malice, and the style, I should suspect it for a blot of the same pen that wrote Eikonoklastes. It runs foul, tends to tumult; and, not content barely to applaud the murder of the King, the execrable author of it vomits upon his ashes with a pedantic and envenomed scorn, pursuing still his sacred memory. Betwixt him [Milton] and his brother Rabshakeh [Needham?] I think a man may venture to divide the glory of it. It relishes the mixture of their united faculties and wickedness.... Say, Milton, Needham, either or both of you, or whosoever ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... cloak so as to be ready to beat his drum to good advantage, and another was testing his timbrel, and all were more and more buzzing out in talk, only here and there could one be found to defend even that curious person, whose proud and pedantic bearing so strongly contrasted with the modest appearance and kind affability ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Spanish • Various
... was still used as a variant of currant, though adherence to it was probably rather pedantic on Smollett's part (cf. his use of "hough" for hoe). ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... have talked on other subjects to the lady next me: but an Englishman cannot suddenly change the course of his conversation. Mr. L—— still persisted in asking a variety of questions about this Polish fete. I excused myself; for if you satisfy curiosity you are no longer sublime; besides it is so pedantic to remember accurately any thing one meets with in books. I assured him that I had forgotten ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... to the art of whistling, while her sister "went in for posters." Another girl was supposed to be studying painting and resorted a few afternoons each week to a studio, well chaperoned. Miss Comstock promised to find something for Adelle to do in an art way. But there was nothing pedantic or professional about the Villa Ponitowski. Miss Comstock prided herself upon her outlook. She knew that her girls would marry in all likelihood, and she endeavored to give them something of the horizon of broad boulevards and watering-places ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... (now the flag of our merchant marine), and was under the personal command of Monk and Rupert; the rear, under Sir Jeremy Smith, flew the blue ensign. Battles at sea were now beginning to be fought under formal rules which soon developed into a system of pedantic rigidity. It was a point of honour that van should encounter van; centre, centre; and rear, rear. The Dutch were moving slowly under shortened sail in line ahead to the south-east of the English. Monk formed his fleet in line abreast on the port tack. The orders ...
— Famous Sea Fights - From Salamis to Tsu-Shima • John Richard Hale
... exhort her to fidelity to her husband. Whereupon Mary answered me, with her accustomed smiling manner, 'There is but one fidelity which one must recognize, and that is to the god of gods—Love! Where he is not, I will not be. The god Hymen is a tedious, pedantic fellow, who burns to ashes all the fresh young love of the heart, and all the enthusiasm of the soul, with his intolerable tallow torch, for Love stands not at his side. I am faithful to the god Amor, therefore I can never be faithful to the god Hymen, ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach |
