"Polyglot" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... slightest sign of debility. The eyes alone, almond-shaped and brown, were too big, with the whites slightly bloodshot by much pen labour under a lamp. The obscure celebrity of the tiny man was well known to Razumov. Polyglot, of unknown parentage, of indefinite nationality, anarchist, with a pedantic and ferocious temperament, and an amazingly inflammatory capacity for invective, he was a power in the background, this violent pamphleteer ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... to the city—below it the polyglot of Europe; above, the amalgam which makes America. It is a neighborhood of traditions which speak in the aspect of the solidly built row of houses facing to the south, breasting the living surge, its front unbroken. This park, with its stretch of green, its dusky maples ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... kingdoms of Charlemagne and Alfred were "new," compared to the empire on the Bosphorus; they were also in every way different; their lines of ancestral descent had nothing in common with that of the polyglot realm which paid tribute to the Caesars of Byzantium; their social problems and after-time history were totally different. This is not true of those "new" nations which spring direct from old nations. Brazil, the Argentine, the United States, are all "new" nations, compared with the nations of ...
— African and European Addresses • Theodore Roosevelt
... other songsters which never find their way to these isles, for which you must consult the pages of Mr. Gould or Mr. Bree—and chief among them the dark Orpheus, and the yellow Hippolais, surpassing the black-cap, and almost equalling the nightingale, for richness and variety of song—the polyglot warbler which penetrates, in summer, as far north as the shores of the British Channel, and there stops short, scared by the twenty miles of sea, after a land journey—and by night, too, as all the warblers ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... the Viceroy, a cook, and a dragoman. Thus my impedimenta were not numerous. The firman was an order to all Egyptian officials for assistance; the cook was dirty and incapable; and the interpreter was nearly ignorant of English, although a professed polyglot. With this small beginning, Africa was before me, and thus I commenced the search for the Nile sources. Absurd as this may appear, it was a correct commencement. Ignorant of Arabic, I could not have commanded a large party, who would have been at the mercy of the interpreter or dragoman; thus, ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... urgent recommendation that the foreman of the printing office gave him a chance. The foreman did not in the least believe that the green-looking young fellow before him could set in type one page of the polyglot Testament for which ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various
... la Chapelle, on his way to America, on a long leave. He had wearily made a tour of the principal hotels and scanned the registers with no lucky find! Not a single gleam of hope shone out in all the polyglot inscriptions passing under his eye! And so he had sadly betaken himself to a safe, retired place, where he could hold the aforesaid ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... song. 12. Stone-curlew. OEdicnemus End of March: loud nocturnal whistle. 13. Turtle-dove. Turtur. 14. Grasshopper-lark. Alauda minima Middle April: a small locustae voce sibilous note, till the end of July. 15. Swift. Hirundo apus. About April 27th. 16. Less reed-sparrow. Passer A sweet polyglot, but arundinaceus hurrying; it has the minor. notes of many birds. 17. Land-rail. Ortygometra. A loud, harsh note—crex, crex. 18. Largest willow Regulus non Cantat voce stridula wren. cristatus. locustae; end of April, on the tops of high beeches. 19. Goat-sucker, or Caprimulgus. ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 1 • Gilbert White
... you read your Bible so much in all your life," said Alison, with a pretty pout. "You'll grow so good that I can't begin to keep up with you. When I try to read my polyglot, the baby comes and bites the corners, and squeals till I put it away and take ...
— Men, Women, and Ghosts • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... politicians; they take a wider theme—European progress—the spread of liberal sentiments over the Continent; on their mental tablets, the names of Russia, Austria, and the Pope, are inscribed in red ink. I have heard some of them talk vigorous sense—yea, I have been present at polyglot discussions in the old, oak-lined dining-room at Hunsden Wood, where a singular insight was given of the sentiments entertained by resolute minds respecting old northern despotisms, and old southern ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... part of the polyglot Austro-Hungarian Empire, which collapsed during World War I. The country fell under communist rule following World War II. In 1956, a revolt and announced withdrawal from the Warsaw Pact were met with a massive military intervention by Moscow. In the more open GORBACHEV years, ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... polyglot expostulations with the stranger on the score of his obstinacy, but all to no purpose; to use a popular expression, he was as dumb as the Doges. He deigned, however, to empty at a single draught a calabash of Malaga that Willis gave him, but there ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien
... organisation, and they issue excellent practical Suggestions for Conferences and Courses of Study. The problem to be grappled with by this Society and others working on similar lines is no doubt one of immense difficulty. It is nothing less than the education in citizenship of the most heterogeneous, polyglot, and in some respects ignorant and degraded population ever assembled in a single city, since the days of Imperial Rome. The spread of political enlightenment in New York and other cities cannot possibly be very rapid; but no effort is being spared to accelerate ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... There was an enormous list of Trustees and the unwieldy character of the board, coupled with the irregular habits of the President, made the failure of the enterprise inevitable. Still it offered in its catalogues a good course of study and gave exhibitions, at which polyglot orations were delivered. The late Prof. Perley R. Lovejoy was the life of the institution and, after several classes had graduated, the University finally ceased to be, when Mr. Lovejoy accepted a position as Professor ...
— The History Of University Education In Maryland • Bernard Christian Steiner
... tramps that poked their noses into queer ports and put to sea with queer cargoes—cargoes that smelled sweet and spicy, with the spice of the far South Seas. Office sailor though he was, Blair Elliston commanded the respect of even the roughest of his polyglot crews—a respect not wholly uncommingled ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... (Naccara, Nacaires), the great kettledrum signalling action. Nakshatra. Nalanda. Nan-Chao, formerly Ai-Lao, Shan dynasty in Yun-nan. Nancouri. Nanghin (Ngan-king). Nangiass, Mongol name of Manzi. Nankau, archway in Pass of, with polyglot inscription. Nanking, not named by Polo. Nanwuli. Naobanjan. Naoshirwan. Naphtha in the Caucasian country. —— Fire used in war by the Karaunahs. Napier, Sir C. Napoleon III., his researches and experiments on mediaeval engines of war. Narikela-Dvipa. ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... The polyglot disturbance that ensued baffles all description. Indeed, I should be puzzled to say exactly what took place, or after how many commands, defiances, threats, protestations, insults, and explanations, a semblance of peace was finally restored. I only know that, at the expiration of ...
— Stories By English Authors: Italy • Various
... now closed, seemed to house millinery or furs. The second floor, by the winking electric letters, was the dentist's. Above this a polyglot babel of signs struggled to indicate the abodes of palmists, dressmakers, musicians and doctors. Still higher up draped curtains and milk bottles white on the window sills proclaimed the ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... party over, suddenly perceives the advancing P. & O., now not much more than a mile away. He draws the distracted officer's attention to the phenomenon and leads him to understand that to start now would lead to an inevitable collision and a watery grave. The polyglot argument waxes furious, the men taking it up in their turn, when their leader falls out exhausted, and the Arab is still keeping up his end triumphantly when the great ship reaches us and slowly steams by, while ...
— The Fifth Battalion Highland Light Infantry in the War 1914-1918 • F.L. Morrison
... springing to his feet. His chains clattered as he rose, while he drew himself as far as they permitted from the quarter whence the voice appeared to proceed. His fear in some degree communicated itself to Captain Dalgetty, who began to repeat, in a sort of polyglot gibberish, all the exorcisms he had ever heard of, without being able to remember more than a word or ...
— A Legend of Montrose • Sir Walter Scott
... savage untamed London on a larger Thames; they were seagull-haunted tidal cities, like no other capitals in Europe. The shipping and buildings mingled in their effects. Like London it looked over the heads of its own people to a limitless polyglot empire. And Russia was an aristocratic land, with a middle-class that had no pride in itself as a class; it had a British toughness and incompetence, a British disregard of logic and meticulous care. Russia, like England, was outside ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... mountainous streets and its polyglot population, Matadi is a picturesque spot. It is the goal of every official through the long years of his service in the bush for at this place he boards the steamer that takes him to Europe. This is the pleasant side of the picture. On the other hand, ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson
... are overcome. The custom of learning foreign languages has become more diffused. The most important writings, in whatever country they appear, circulate through translations in all other civilized lands. All well-stored libraries are polyglot. ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... that a great portion of the human race, especially in the big polyglot empires and the smaller states of Europe, are groaning under the incubus of the language difficulty, and have to spend years on the study of mere words before they can fit themselves for an active career, then the abolition of this heavy handicap ...
— International Language - Past, Present and Future: With Specimens of Esperanto and Grammar • Walter J. Clark
... accomplishments, and in the number of his published "works"—three hundred and eighty-three. Nothing that he produced has any original value; but his erudition was enormous. Of "Magnalia," his chief and representative work, it has been said that "it is a heterogeneous and polyglot compilation of information useful and useless, of unbridled pedantry, of religious adjuration, biographical anecdotes, political maxims, and theories of education.... Indeed, it contains everything except order, accuracy, sobriety, proportion, ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... advice of a polyglot concierge, had walked down the length of that silent street, the Franciszkanska, where the Jews ply their mysterious trades and where every shutter is painted with bright images of the wares sold within the house. The street is ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... educational value—and perhaps it is deeducational—to learn to tell the time of day or name a spade in several different tongues or to learn to say the Lord's Prayer in many different languages, any one of which the Lord only can understand. The polyglot people that one meets on great international highways of travel are linguists only in the sense that the moke on the variety stage who plays a dozen instruments equally badly is a musician. It is a psychological impossibility to pass through the ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... which was to be so intimately identified with the language of the next three centuries, saw her also furnished with adequate dictionaries of French, Italian, and Spanish; and, in 1617, a still more ambitious work was accomplished by John Minsheu in the production of a polyglot dictionary of English with ten other languages, British or Welsh, Low Dutch, High Dutch, French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, which he entitled '[Greek: Haegemon eis tas glossas], id est Ductor in Linguas, ...
— The evolution of English lexicography • James Augustus Henry Murray
... allowed more than ever a free hand, on purpose to escort her to the Continent and encompass her there, and had dedicated to her, from the moment of their meeting, all the treasures of his experience. She had judged him in advance—polyglot and universal, very dear and very deep—as probably but a swindler finished to the finger-tips; for he was forever carrying one well-kept Italian hand to his heart and plunging the other straight into her pocket, ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... he leaves a theme so poetical in itself to be poetical, without any officious help from himself, and that, though an artist, he does not enter on any of those disquisitions which would have made Sir Joshua shift his trumpet. On the whole, we are inclined to forgive him the polyglot lumber of his chapter on the Evil Eye in consideration of the scenery and galleries which he has spared us. We think we see symptoms that the Nature-mania which began with Rousseau is on the decline, and that men and their ways are getting ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... corpse, and this man was a savant. Only to see him you caught science imprinted in the gestures of his body and in the folds of his dress. His was a fossil face, the serious cast of which was counteracted by that wrinkled mobility of the polyglot which verges on grimace. But a severe man withal; nothing of the hypocrite, nothing of the cynic. A tragic dreamer. He was one of those whom crime leaves pensive; he had the brow of an incendiary tempered by ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... unit of the Imperial Forces. The first public appearance of the sailor airmen was at a proposed review of the fleet by the King at a test mobilization. The King was unable to attend, but the naval pilots carried out their part of the programme very creditably considering the polyglot nature of their sea-planes. A few weeks later and the country was ...
— The Mastery of the Air • William J. Claxton
... communities, and above all the Western-educated classes who are the intellectual offspring of British rule, were gathered together to hear delivered to them in English—the one language in which, as a result of British rule, and by no means the least valuable, Indians from all parts of a vast polyglot country are able to hold converse—the Royal message throwing open to the people of India the road to Swaraj within the British Empire, the imperial city of Delhi went into mourning as a sign of angry protest, and the vast majority of its citizens, mostly, it must be ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... S. Egozene of that town. The two others are, one, largely English, the Pedagogical Library, established under the auspices of the Commissioner of Education, and the San Juan Free Library, to which Mr. Andrew Carnegie has given $100,000, and which is polyglot, and was formally opened to the public April 20, 1901. There is also a growing number of libraries in the public schools. From the above data it appears that, owing to the peculiar conditions that obtained in this island, the people of Puerto Rico were very slow in joining the ...
— The History of Puerto Rico - From the Spanish Discovery to the American Occupation • R.A. Van Middeldyk
... discursive in his mode of treating them. The prodigious fecundity of the author of a hundred volumes, the varied acquisitions of the philosopher, the historian, the satirist, the moralist, give diversity to his subjects, and an endless variety to his ideas. He possessed, as it were, a polyglot mind; he threw himself into the feelings and passions of every country and every age, and brought out in his dramas part at least of the inexhaustible store of human thoughts and events which have from the beginning of time agitated the human race. The ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... officiating at the chapel of the Bavarian Legation in London that he began contributing the Prout papers to Fraser's Magazine. These consisted of fanciful narratives, each serving as a vehicle for the display of his wonderful polyglot learning, and containing translations of well-known English songs into Latin, Greek, French, and Italian verse, which later he seriously represented as the true originals from which the English authors had ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... housemaid, in love with Robin. She hates Polyglot, the tutor of "Master Charles," but is very fond of Charles. Molly tries to get "the tuterer Polypot" into a scrape, but finds, to her consternation, that Master Charles is in reality the party to be blamed.—J. Poole, ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... concerned, they were practically dead and buried. The Roman populace had by that period lost all taste for the highest and most refined forms of art. The races in the circus, the variety entertainments and bloodshed of the amphitheatre had captured the favour of the polyglot, pampered multitude that must have formed such a large ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... knows half the literatures of the world, and MacLachan, the tailor, to whom Carlyle is by way of being light reading. She delivered some edifying exhortations upon the subject of Americanism to Polyglot Elsa, of the Elite Restaurant (who had taken upon her sturdy young shoulders the support of an old mother and a paralytic sister, so that her two brothers might enlist for the war—a detail of patriotism which the dispenser ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... "Ja, wohl," and "Si, signor." Amedee was an inexperienced tourist, who did not drag along with him a dozen trunks, and had not a rich and indolent air; so he was quickly despatched by the Swiss polyglot into a fourth-story room, which looked out into an open well, and was so gloomy that while he washed his hands he was afraid of falling ill and dying there without help. A notice written in four languages hung upon the wall, and, to add to his cheerfulness, it advised him to leave ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... the augurs of Red Dog, French Pete, a polyglot jester, "that while every fool went to taking up claims where the gold had already been found no one thought of stepping into the old man's old choux in the cabbage-garden!" Any doubt, however, of the alliance of the families was dissipated by the intimacy that sprang up between the elder Slinn ...
— A Millionaire of Rough-and-Ready • Bret Harte
... tall, homely man, dashing in and out in his shirt-sleeves between the rooms and the moving-van drawn up at the curb, had come down with the deliberate purpose of making a neighborhood out of a chaos, of organizing that jumble of scattered polyglot lives.... In the faded sunshine of the unusually warm winter afternoon, with its vistas of gold-dusty air, and its noise of playing children and on-surging trolleys and trucks and all the minute life of the saloons and the stores—women hanging out of windows to get the recreation ...
— The Nine-Tenths • James Oppenheim
... he writes for a Polyglot Bible, the Gospels in Malay, Curtis's Botanical Magazine, and Sowerby's English Botany, at his own cost, and thus plans the conquest of the world:—"I hope the Society will go on and increase, and that the multitudes of heathen in the world may hear the glorious ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith
... Hebrew MSS. of the Complutensian Polyglot were at Alcala in 1821, when were they removed to Madrid, and in what library at Madrid are they now? The Greek MSS. are supposed to have been returned to the Vatican Library. If the Chaldee MSS. are in the handwriting of one of the editors, as stated by Puigblanch, they cannot be of much ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 25. Saturday, April 20, 1850 • Various
... and engrossing topic may be concluded by a reference to a particular spear. Since it consoles and comforts the solitary walks of an aged man, steeped to the lips in the superstitions of his race, and haply ignorant of, or indifferent to, the polyglot pastimes of the younger generation soiled by contact with the whites, the spear, though not a weapon of offence or of sport, is serious and indeed vital to the peace of mind of its owner. He is one of the few who were young men when the white folks intruded upon the race, with their wretched practical ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... conversation of the inhabitants—was a visit which a governor of Hongkong had made there when he was a guest in the home of Alberto. Many were the tales told of this distinguished Englishman, who was Sir John Bowring, the notable polyglot and translator into English of poetry in practically every one of the dialects of Europe. His achievements along this line had put him second or third among the linguists of the century. He was also interested in history, and ...
— Lineage, Life, and Labors of Jose Rizal, Philippine Patriot • Austin Craig
... is down stairs," said Lady Mabel, "has been amusing us at dinner with his version of our adventure at the ford of the Cayo; and a very good story he makes of it, giving some rich samples of Captain Hatton's polyglot eloquence. He, alone, seems not to have been in the dark; and saw all, and more than all, that occurred—nor does he forget you in the picture. But, papa cannot see the wit of it ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... intend to attempt excavations?" said he in a sort of cosmopolitan dialect which those who have been in the ports of the Levant and have had recourse to the services of the polyglot dragomans—who end by not knowing any language—are well acquainted with. Fortunately, both Lord Evandale and his learned companion knew the various tongues from which Argyropoulos borrowed. "I can place at your disposal," he went on, "some hundred energetic fellahs ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... The introductions over, a polyglot conversation ensued in French by the Padre and Mrs. Brimmer, and in broken English by Miss Chubb, Miss Keene, and the other passengers with the Commander's secretary, varied by occasional scraps ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte
... well known in America; his reputation was European. He played the game because he loved it, being comfortably fortified with worldly goods. He was a linguist of rare attainments, specializing in the polyglot of southeastern Europe. He came and went like cloud shadow. His foresight was so keen he was seldom ordered to go here or there; he was generally on the spot when the ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath
... the first book ever printed with movable types. There are Bibles in all languages. There is the first complete edition of the New Testament in Greek ever published, its title-page dated Basle, 1516. In a glass case in the north library are the four huge "Polyglot" Bibles, marvels of typography, known as the Complutensian, Antwerp, Paris, and English Polyglots. In the same case repose the Codex Sinaiticus, Codex Alexandrinus, and Codex Vaticanus,—three great folios, in the original Greek and Hebrew, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... trick of catching hopefully at a neighbor's phrase usually serves to defeat itself, as it unmasks the ignorance of said neighbor, and the tune ends in a sort of polyglot mouthing which is not at all flattering to the ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... delivered this truthful poem off hand, so to speak, in "broken" French, the cosmopolitan, polyglot audience "caught on" and "shipped" the Stratford "poacher" ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... Austria-Hungary, which would have presented a different task under ordinary conditions, became in these circumstances comparatively very simple. A polyglot combination of States, having little in common and apparently held together only by the decaying genius of the aged Emperor Franz Joseph, the dual monarchy was regarded everywhere as on the verge of dissolution. ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... part of such a briery tangle, that rollicking polyglot, the yellow-breasted chat, loves to hide its nest. Indeed, many birds can say with Br'er Rabbit that they were "bred en bawn in a brier-patch." Throughout the eastern half of the United $tates and Upper Canada the catbrier ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... looked out upon the polyglot of Second Avenue, which even then, over a not quite abandoned elegance, was donning its Joseph's coat of seventeen nationalities and dining, bartering, and gesticulating in as ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... might be, a-swearing and a-praying as they went in more tongues than were babbled at Babel Tower; in other words, on the day when the never-to-be-broken Hindenburg line was broken through and through, a battalion of one of the infantry regiments of this same polyglot division formed a little individual ground swell in the first ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... that Andy is superimposed with his old hankering for the oral and polyglot system of buncoing. That man had a vocabulary of about 10,000 words and synonyms, which arrayed themselves into contraband sophistries and parables when ...
— The Gentle Grafter • O. Henry |
