"Rote" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... forced and measured tasks, Nor weary rote, nor formal chains; The simple heart, that freely asks In ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... fast dying out in the Peninsula, as other mediaeval landmarks become effaced. These people are simply the wandering bards and minstrels, who find their place in an Independent Malay State as naturally as did their prototypes in the countries of Europe during the Middle Ages. They learn by rote some old-world tale, which has been transmitted by word of mouth through countless generations, and they wander from village to village, singing it for pay to the unlettered people, to whom these songs and stories represent the only literature which comes within their experience. ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... impossible for me to get out—may I hear then exactly the whole story? All that I know now, so far as I could gather from your wife, poor soul, is of course inconceivable: that you went out one man and came home another. You will understand, my dear man, I am speaking, as it were, by rote. God has mercifully ordered that the human brain works slowly; first the blow, hours afterwards the bruise. Oh, dear me, that man Hume—"on miracles"—positively amazing! So that too, please, you will be quite ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... Poland? We have seen, say, a million of Frenchmen, and nearly the same of Italians, since then, with a dozen or so of kings and emperors,—but never the faintest likeness to those deluding pictures. We learned at the same time, by painful rote, the population of various capital cities; but we cannot find in any statistic-book gazetteer, neither in McCulloch nor in Worcester, any of the old, familiar numbers. Also in that same Wonder-Book of Malte-Brun, edited by Pietro il Parlatore, we recall a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... of the Church Catechism, learned by rote, parrot fashion, had not awakened in the laundress's boy any keen sense of honour. He had a dim feeling that it was a shabby service which he was called upon to perform; but then of course Miss Pillby, who taught the young ladies, and who was no doubt a wise and discreet ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... feared that her chief might misconstrue any suggestion from her as an act of impertinence, Miss Perkins, having learned all the company's cut-glass quotations by rote, could easily have supplied the remainder of the letter. As it was, she waited impatiently, tapping the corner of the desk with her idle pencil. Jimmy turned at the sound, and glanced at the pencil with unmistakable disapproval. Miss Perkins waited in silence. After one or two more uneasy ...
— Baby Mine • Margaret Mayo
... to hear your voice. An Esquimaux would feel himself getting civilized under it for there's sense in the very sound. A man's character speaks in his voice, even more than in his words. These he may utter by rote, but his 'voice is the man for a' that,' and betrays or divulges his peculiar nature. Do you like my voice, James? I hope ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... religious organisation is that a body of men should arise in its ranks, and hold its positions of trust, who have learned its great fundamental doctrines by rote out of the catechism, but have no experimental knowledge of their truth inwrought by the mighty anointing of the Holy Ghost, and who are destitute of "an unction from the Holy One," by which, says John, "ye know all things" (1 ...
— When the Holy Ghost is Come • Col. S. L. Brengle
... culture; but do we know in what true culture really consists? As a whole, I think not. A smattering of sentimental literature, a superficial refinement of manners, a few borrowed phrases and appropriated customs of "society," the rendering of a few pieces by rote, and fashionable dress, constitute with, alas! too many the standard of culture. How unworthy of their race are those who entertain the thought! All this may be but the gilding of barbarism; beneath this external glitter ...
— Autobiography of Frank G. Allen, Minister of the Gospel - and Selections from his Writings • Frank G. Allen
... completed by the lesson in philosophy. In this course logic, morals and metaphysics were taught. Here the young persons handled, adjusted, and knocked about more or less adroitly the formula on God, nature, the soul and science they had learned by rote. Less scholastic, abridged, and made easy, this verbal exercise has been maintained in the lycees.[6219] Under the new regime, as well as under the old one, a string of abstract terms, which the professor thought he could explain and which the pupil thought ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 6 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 2 (of 2) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... idea that you press down the string as you press a button and—presto—the magic harmonics appear! They are a simple and natural result of the proper application of scientific principles; and the sooner the student learns to form and combine harmonics himself instead of learning them by rote, the better will he play them. Too often a student can give the fingering of certain double harmonics and cannot use it. Of course, harmonics are only a detail of the complete mastery of the violin; but mastery of all details leads ...
— Violin Mastery - Talks with Master Violinists and Teachers • Frederick H. Martens
... of his herte, He may not wepe although him sore smerte. Therfore in stede of weping and praieres, Men mote[85] give silver to the poure freres. His tippet was ay farsed[86] ful of knives, And pinnes, for to given fayre wives. And certainly he hadde a mery note. Wel coude he singe and plaien on a rote.[87] Of yeddinges[88] he bar utterly the pris. His nekke was white as the flour de lis. Therto he strong was as a champioun, And knew wel the tavernes in every toun, And every hosteler and tappestere, Better than a lazar or a beggestere, For ...
— English Satires • Various
... nearly always alone, one has occasion to gauge the deep dreariness of human beings pure and simple, when, so to speak, the small, learnt-by-rote lessons of civilization, of kindness, graciousness, or intelligence, are not being called into play by common business or acquaintanceship. There, in the train, they sit in the elemental, native dreariness of their more practical, ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee
... would be folly. Even supposing they could be educated—which is scarcely supposable, for it would seem a contravention of Heaven's fiat—they could no more apply this learning, which would simply be by rote, than they could go to the moon. Such men are not unfrequently met with, and are designated, by common consent, learned fools. Nature points out the education they should receive. In like manner with those of higher and nobler attributes, ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... difference to scholarship. His moral earnestness has made no difference to morality. He acquired scholarship by rote, politics by association, and morality by tradition. To none of these things did he bring the fire of original passion. The force in his youth was ambition, and the goal of his energy was success. No man ever laboured ...
— The Mirrors of Downing Street - Some Political Reflections by a Gentleman with a Duster • Harold Begbie
... Rote, continual derider of cowards, thinkest thou that we have avenged Frode enough, when we have spent seven deaths on the vengeance of one? Lo, those are borne out dead who paid homage not to thy sway in deed, but only in show, and though obsequious they planned treachery. But I always ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... served at two by a trembling parlour-maid; the coffee was set in the hall, the cigar-box, the spirit-flame. Frodsham came for orders, Mr. Menzies reported Glyde absent without leave. These things were done by rote: yet the whole house knew the facts. Sanchia, dining in the middle of the day, plied her knife and fork with composure. It was her way to face facts once for all, tussle with them, gain or lose, and be done with them. ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... Greeks borrowed the names of their gods from Egypt, but the gods themselves were entirely different ones. It is also true that some of the gods of the Romans were borrowed from the Greeks, but their life was left behind. They merely repeated by rote the Greek mythology, having no power to invent one for themselves. But the Greek religion they never received. For instead of its fair humanities, the Roman gods were only servants of the state,—a higher kind of consuls, tribunes, and lictors. The real Olympus ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... Yet see what strong intellects dare not yet hear God himself unless he speak the phraseology of I know not what David, or Jeremiah, or Paul. We shall not always set so great a price on a few texts, on a few lives. We are like children who repeat by rote the sentences of grandames and tutors, and, as they grow older, of the men of talents and character they chance to see,—painfully recollecting the exact words they spoke; afterwards, when they ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... rhinoceros, who should tell him most exquisitely all their shapes, colour, bigness, and particular marks; or of a gorgeous palace, the architecture; with declaring the full beauties, might well make the hearer able to repeat, as it were by rote, all he had heard, yet should never satisfy his inward conceits, with being witness to itself of a true lively knowledge: but the same man, as soon as he might see those beasts well painted, or the house well in model, should ...
— English literary criticism • Various
... me, if from present things I turn To speak what in my heart will beat and burn, And hang my wreath on his world-honored urn. Nature, they say, doth dote, And cannot make a man 155 Save on some worn-out plan, Repeating us by rote: For him her Old-World mould aside she threw, And, choosing sweet clay from the breast Of the unexhausted West, 160 With stuff untainted shaped a hero new, Wise, steadfast in the strength of God, and true. How beautiful to see ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... rote you sooner only the sensor wont let me tell where I am an I couldnt think of nothin else to say. This is the third letter Ive rote since we landed. Im a little worried about the other two cause the Captin said we couldnt menshun the names ...
— "Same old Bill, eh Mable!" • Edward Streeter
... bother'd, my dear, 'twixt that troublesome boy's (Bob's) cookery language, and Madame Le Roi's: What with fillets of roses, and fillets of veal, Things garni with lace, and things garni with eel, One's hair, and one's cutlets both en papillote, And a thousand more things I shall ne'er have by rote, I can scarce tell the difference, at least as to phrase, Between beef a la Psyche and curls a la braise.— But, in short, dear, I'm trick'd out quite a la Francaise, With my bonnet—so beautiful!—high up and poking, Like things that are ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... his time to every trade, Save censure.—Critics all are ready made. Take hackneyed jokes from Miller, got by rote, With just enough of learning to misquote; A mind well skill'd to find or forge a fault, A turn for punning—call it Attic salt: Fear not to lie, 'twill seem a lucky hit, Shrink not from blasphemy, 'twill pass for wit, Care not for feeling,—pass your proper jest, And stand ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... Lord's Prayer, and the Ten Commandments, in the vulgar (i.e. his native) tongue, and be further instructed, etc." Here, the words "can say" obviously mean can say intelligently. The mere saying of the words by rote is comparatively unimportant, though it has its use; but if this were all, it would degrade the Candidate's intellectual status to the capacities of a parrot. But, "as soon as" he can intelligently comply with the Church's requirements, as soon as he has reached "a competent ...
— The Church: Her Books and Her Sacraments • E. E. Holmes
... to her. His face was set now, white and passionless, as it had been while he waited to rescue her from the river, and when he spoke there was no tone in his voice; it was as if he were repeating some dry fact by rote. ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... old, it was most bald-hedded, I suckceeded in completely ridden the floor of its surplus stock of litterature, and terbackhey balls, wot them printers spit out, wen they warnted to use there mouths, to consine sum feller, wot rote orful to Hallyfax, ...
— The Bad Boy At Home - And His Experiences In Trying To Become An Editor - 1885 • Walter T. Gray
... now left me, sunk on the Ground as I was, and retired a Space, I know not whither, but methinks he walked hastilie to and fro. Thus I remained, agonized in Tears, unable to recal one Word of the humble Appeal I had pondered on my Journey, or to have spoken it, though I had known everie Syllable by Rote; yet not wishing myself, even in that Suspense, Shame, and Anguish, elsewhere than where I was cast, ...
— Mary Powell & Deborah's Diary • Anne Manning
... and stode where the kynge shulde passe by: By and by the kynge knewe hym, and called hym to hym. Conon stepte to the kynge and presented his rote with a gladde chere. And the kynge toke it more gladly, and bad one, that was nerest to hym, to laye it vp amonge those iewels that he best loued; and than commaunded Conon to dyne with hym. Whan dyner was done, he thanked Conon: and whan the kyng sawe that he ...
— Shakespeare Jest-Books; - Reprints of the Early and Very Rare Jest-Books Supposed - to Have Been Used by Shakespeare • Unknown
... that people attached crude or arbitrary meanings; and now she hardly knew what they conveyed to her, and longed, as for something far away, for the reality of those simple teachings—once realities, now all by rote! Saved by faith! What was faith? Could all depend on a last sensation? And as to her life. Failure, failure through headstrong blindness and self-will, resulting in the agony of the innocent. Was this ground of hope? She tried to think ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... other day, while the three Englishmen hammered away in vain at Brother Jonathan Herring's. The Englishmen represented brute force. The Germans had been trained to appreciate principle. The Englishman "knows his business by rote and rule of thumb"—science, which would "teach him to do in an hour what has hitherto occupied him two hours," "is in a manner forbidden to him." To this cause the "Times" attributes the falling off of English workmen in comparison with ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... Antony, and young Octavius, come, Revenge yourselves alone on Cassius, For Cassius is a-weary of the world; 95 Hated by one he loves; brav'd by his brother; Check'd like a bondman; all his faults observ'd, Set in a note-book, learn'd, and conn'd by rote, To cast into my teeth. O, I could weep My spirit from mine eyes! There is my dagger, 100 And here my naked breast; within, a heart Dearer than Plutus' mine, richer than gold: If that thou be'st a Roman, take it forth; I, that denied thee gold, will give my heart: Strike, as thou didst at Caesar; ...
— The New Hudson Shakespeare: Julius Caesar • William Shakespeare
... of judgments, and the arbitrators of rewards or punishments. The immunity which they enjoyed from war, allured many young men to enrol themselves in this order. Their education was a poetical one, for it was necessary to learn by rote several thousand verses, in which all the knowledge then extant ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XX. No. 557., Saturday, July 14, 1832 • Various
... grey day, adds that of ungovernable rage, is so wild a visitor that no attempt at all is made to understand him; and the beggars beg dismayed but unalarmed, uninterruptedly, without a pause or a conjecture. They beg by rote, thinking of something else, as occasion arises, and all indifferent to the ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell
... of our century survive—Carlyle and Macaulay. They may be read with care. We may do as Cassius said Brutus did to him, observe all their faults, set them in a note-book, learn and con them by rote; nevertheless we shall get good from them. Oscar Browning said—I am quoting H. Morse Stephens again—of Carlyle's description of the flight of the king to Varennes, that in every one of his details where a writer ...
— Historical Essays • James Ford Rhodes
... an ambuscade of savages in some Paynim country. They were, as I surmise, of the same breed as those of whom the excellent John Milton wrote: "The sons of Belial, flown with insolence and wine." Alas! my memory is not what it was, for at one time I could say by rote whole books of that noble ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Guiltlessness is a negative, sanctity is a positive state, and is acquired as the result of active correspondence with the will of God. In order that there may be this correspondence the will of God must be known, not merely as we know the things that we have learned by rote, but known in the sense of understood and appreciated. The will of God is knowable: that is, it has been revealed to man; but it needs to be effectively made known to the individual man. He must be convinced ...
— Our Lady Saint Mary • J. G. H. Barry
... have several instances of habits, which may be revived by one single word; as when a person, who has by rote any periods of a discourse, or any number of verses, will be put in remembrance of the whole, which he is at a loss to recollect, by that single word or ...
— A Treatise of Human Nature • David Hume
... have urged in these chapters cannot be learned by rote. What can be taught by rule of thumb is the administration of precedents. That is at once the easiest and the most fruitless form of public activity. Only a low degree of intelligence is required and of effort merely a persistent repetition. ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... are construed as more significant than open encouragement would be by a less poetic temperament. I have no doubt the poor fellow wears over his heart every rose-bud you ever gave him, and knows by rote every word of sympathy you ever said to him. And then that portrait,—what volumes it tells of itself! Fancy that ardent soul toiling over the canvas to reproduce from memory your image (you tell ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... by dint of skill and patience, work that is very passable. The women weave their own cloth on the native looms, and practice various other industries. The children are well trained in hospitality and public manners, which they learn by rote. ...
— The Great White Tribe in Filipinia • Paul T. Gilbert
... she knew well Thy love did read by rote, that could not spell. But come, young waverer, come go with me, In one respect I'll thy assistant be; For this alliance may so happy prove, To turn your ...
— Romeo and Juliet • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... good and swote, It sprang to hevene crop and rote, Therein to dwellyn and ben our bote; Every day it ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... commit doldrum." Ladies and gentlemen, I confess, also, that I don't like those schools, even though the instruction given in them be gratuitous, where those sweet little voices which ought to be heard speaking in very different accents, anathematise by rote any human being who does not hold what is taught there. Lastly, I do not like, and I did not like some years ago, cheap distant schools, where neglected children pine from year to year under an amount of neglect, want, and youthful misery far too sad even to be glanced ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens
... in thiS Setlement but th as iS Several agent round her and tha ar interfer With mee eSpeSly William a StavSon he liveS her at enfield he Wanted mee to giv him one of you Sur klerS So he Wod be agent but i Wodent let hi m hav hit an he rote to you i SupoSe an haS got a Suplye of pillS an ar aruning a gant mee he iS Sell ing them at 20 centS a box i Want you to St op him ...
— History of the Comstock Patent Medicine Business and Dr. Morse's Indian Root Pills • Robert B. Shaw
... that I was actually present in those scenes; they are impressed upon me with such an astonishing air of fidelity." While, on the one hand, he never repeated the words that had to be delivered phlegmatically, or as by rote; on the other hand, he never permitted voice, look, gesture, to pass the limits of discretion, even at moments the most impassioned; as, for example, where Nancy, in the famous murder-scene, shrieked ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... literary. I wander abroad be night seeking idiosyncrasies in the masses and truth in the heavens above. When ye came upon me I was in contemplation of the elevated road in conjunction with the chief luminary of night. The rapid transit is poetry and art: the moon but a tedious, dry body, moving by rote. But these are private opinions, for, in the business of literature, the conditions are reversed. 'Tis me hope to be writing a book to explain the strange things ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... Littlejohn maintained the right, Through storm and shine, in the world's despite; When fools or quacks desired his vote, Dosed him with arguments learned by rote, 20 Or by coaxing, threats, or promise tried To gain his support to the wrong side, "Nay, nay," said John with an angry frown, "Your coin is spurious—nail ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... cannot live by rote and rule; I was not born a slave To narrow fancies; I must feel, although a ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... forgotten that he had read his play to her one night shortly after Jenny's birth, and she had leaned forward with her chin on her palm and a look in her face as if she were listening for a cry which never came from the nursery. Her praise had had the sound of being recited by rote, and had aroused in him a sense of exasperation which returned even now whenever she mentioned his work. In the days of his courtship the memory of her simplicities clung like an exquisite bouquet to the intoxicating ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... nine of the clergy, nineteen of the noblesse, fifty-two of the third estate. The king opened the assembly on the 4th of November, 1596, with these words, full of dignity, and powerful in their vivid simplicity: "If I desired to win the title of orator, I would have learned by rote some fine, long speech, and would deliver it to you with proper gravity. But, gentlemen, my desire prompts me towards two more glorious titles, the names of deliverer and restorer of this kingdom. In order to attain whereto I have gathered you together. You ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume V. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... society? Did he begin to think that, after all, savage freedom was to be preferred to dull, systematic civilization? Had he come to the conclusion that much learning is, at best, but vanity? Did he want to go babbling again in chaotic gibberish rather than to talk smoothly by rote? ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 2, December, 1877 • Various
... now a terrible old martinet, with long Bible lessons, lectures, pages of catechism, sermons to be conned by rote, and an awful catalogue of punishments for idleness, and what would seem to him impiety. I was going, then, to a frightful isolated reformatory, where for the first time in my life I should be subjected to a rigorous and ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... experienced worker who gets to know the instruction by rote is not bothered by extreme detail. On the contrary, he grasps it at a glance, and focuses his mind upon any new feature and upon the speed and exactness of muscular action needed for compliance ...
— The Psychology of Management - The Function of the Mind in Determining, Teaching and - Installing Methods of Least Waste • L. M. Gilbreth
... elegant) language. The "ciphering" of the lower schools expands into elementary mathematics in the higher; into arithmetic, with a little algebra, a little Euclid. But I doubt if one boy in five hundred has ever heard the explanation of a rule of arithmetic, or knows his Euclid otherwise than by rote. ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley
... was a set speech prepared beforehand. She knew so well the faintly unnatural note in his voice when he was reciting sentences that he had learned by rote: she who had helped in so many rehearsals before his public utterances could not be mistaken. However, she had to be contented with it. And, stilted and stiff as it was, it certainly seemed to imply that ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... attend—the Legal School under the Old Dispensation, the Ecclesiastical School under the New—it has been taken for granted that he can neither discern what is true, nor desire what is good. The truth of things has therefore been formulated for him, and he has been required to learn it by rote and profess his belief in it, clause by clause. His duty has also been formulated for him, and he has been required to perform it, detail by detail, in obedience to the commandments of an all-embracing Code, or to the direction of an ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... receive grants. There is a decreasing, but still considerable, class of private schools, which make no attempt to satisfy the conditions attached to these grants. The mullah in the mosque teaches children passages of the Kuran by rote, or the shopkeeper's son is taught in a Mahajani school native arithmetic and the curious script in which accounts are kept. A boys' school of a special kind is the Panjab Chiefs' College at Lahore, intended for the sons of princes and men of ...
— The Panjab, North-West Frontier Province, and Kashmir • Sir James McCrone Douie
... extremely like those attendant upon the repetition of some performance by one who has done it very often before, but who requires just a little prompting to set him off, on getting which, the whole familiar routine presents itself before him, and he repeats his task by rote. Surely then we are justified in suspecting that there must have been more bona fide personal recollection and experience, with more effort and failure on the part of the infant ...
— Life and Habit • Samuel Butler
... you sooner only the sensor wont let me tell where I am an I couldnt think of nothin else to say. This is the third letter Ive rote since we landed. Im a little worried about the other two cause the Captin said we couldnt menshun the names of no places. So I just addressed them ...
— "Same old Bill, eh Mable!" • Edward Streeter
... "Ya Sin" (chaps. xxxvi.) the "heart of the Koran" much used for edifying recitation. Some pious Moslems in Egypt repeat it as a Wazifah, or religious task, or as masses for the dead, and all educated men know its 83 versets by rote. ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton
... seemed almost to override that of the Governor himself, yielded so far as to allow the father to see his daughter, on condition that he spoke to no other English prisoner. He spoke to her for an hour, exhorting her never to forget her catechism, which she had learned by rote. The Governor and his wife afterwards did all in their power to procure her ransom, but ...
— Skookum Chuck Fables - Bits of History, Through the Microscope • Skookum Chuck (pseud for R.D. Cumming)
... image by rote, and as I conned the traits in memory it seemed as if I read her very heart. She was dressed with something of her mother's coquetry and love of positive colour. Her robe, which I knew she must ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... figures to new tunes. I wonder if there are any people anywhere in the world who stand on their own feet, and think and act for themselves; who don't set their watches by other people's; who don't live and marry and die by rote, expecting to go straight up to ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... in her breath on the "Yes," so that it sounded like a sob. The other words came slowly from her, one by one, as if she repeated them by rote, ...
— The Immortal Moment - The Story of Kitty Tailleur • May Sinclair
... in view is serfdom for the Negro, then a vast amount of industrial training by rote, minus the natural sciences and mechanic arts for the generation of capacity, plus such rudiments in arithmetic, reading and writing as will enable him to be an efficient workman under the directions of others is the requisite. If it is the desire to make the Negro a useful agent ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... knowledge of the ledges and sunken rocks, I speak of pilots, who knew the wind by its scent and the wave by its taste, and could have steered blindfold to any port between Boston and Mount Desert, guided only by the rote of the shore; the peculiar sound of the surf on each island, beach, and line of rocks, along the coast. Thus do I talk, and all my auditors grow wise, while they deem ...
— The Village Uncle (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... family at home, and amused them by describing the town, with every part of which he was particularly acquainted. He could repeat all the observations that were retailed in the atmosphere of the play-houses, and had all the good things of the high wits by rote long before they made their way into the jest-books. The intervals between conversation were employed in teaching my daughters piquet, or sometimes in setting my two little ones to box to make them sharp, as he called it; but the hopes of having him for a son-in-law, in some ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... priis, Bifore him kneland and leuedis, Now seth he no thing that him liketh, Bot wild wormes bi him striketh: He that had y-had plente Of mete and drinke, of ich deynte, Now may he al daye digge and wrote, Er he find his fille of rote. In sorner he liveth bi wild fruit, And verien hot gode lite. In winter may he no thing find, Bot ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, Vol. II (of 3) • Walter Scott
... childhood was passed partly at Cockermouth, and partly with his maternal grandfather at Penrith. His first teacher appears to have been Mrs. Anne Birkett, a kind of Shenstone's Schoolmistress, who practised the memory of her pupils, teaching them chiefly by rote, and not endeavoring to cultivate their reasoning faculties, a process by which children are apt to be converted from natural logicians into impertinent sophists. Among his schoolmates here was Mary Hutchinson, who afterwards ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... his ideas. But tormenting visions of Mara and her admirer pursued him, and he discoursed mechanically, his reasoning on the woman question having become a matter of rote to him. ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... leues all torne With Letters, dymme, almost defaced cleane Thy hyllynge rote, with wormes all to worne Thou lay, that pyte it was to sene Bounde with olde quayres, for ages all hoorse and grene Thy mater endormed, for lacke of thy presence But nowe arte losed, go shewe ...
— Printers' Marks - A Chapter in the History of Typography • William Roberts
... her head, Wept with the passion of an angry grief: Forgive me, if from present things I turn To speak what in my heart will beat and burn, 155 And hang my wreath on his world-honored urn. Nature, they say, doth dote, And cannot make a man Save on some worn-out plan, Repeating us by rote: 160 For him her Old-World moulds aside she threw, And, choosing sweet clay from the breast Of the unexhausted West, With stuff untainted shaped a hero new, Wise, steadfast in the strength of God, and true. 165 How beautiful ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... the story—repose!" his words sounded hollow, like a lesson he had learned by rote and propriety had ...
— The Man Who Wins • Robert Herrick
... play upon the flute or the fiddle, he is altogether irresistible. But he piques himself upon being polished above the natives of any other country by his conversation with the fair sex. In the course of this communication, with which he is indulged from his tender years, he learns like a parrot, by rote, the whole circle of French compliments, which you know are a set of phrases ridiculous even to a proverb; and these he throws out indiscriminately to all women, without distinction in the exercise of that kind of address, which is ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... Incredible as it may sound, we are told by the best authority, by an enlightened yet strictly orthodox Parsi, that there is hardly a man or a woman who could give an account of the faith that is in them. 'The whole religious education of a Parsi child consists in preparing by rote a certain number of prayers in Zend, without understanding a word of them; the knowledge of the doctrines of their religion being left to be picked up from casual conversation.' A Parsi, in fact, hardly knows what ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller
... with a grimace. "You are about to say I repent of folly—or the enticing of a virgin—or that I fell victim to the blandishments of some tricky dame—I know all that cant by rote!—a man always repents until his broken head is mended, but all that is apart from the real thing—which is this:—In what way does my moment with a lady in the dark affect the Viceroy of the Indies? Why should his Excellency ...
— The Flute of the Gods • Marah Ellis Ryan
... Steadily the oars click in the rowlocks; stroke after stroke of the broad blades draws him away from the lessening line of land, over the wavering floor of the ocean, nearer the lonely rocks. Slowly the coast-lights fade, and now the rote of the sea among the lonely ledges of the Shoals salutes his attentive ear. A little longer and he nears Appledore, the first island, and now he passes by the snow-covered, ice-bound rock, with the long buildings ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... tense desire? No, this is fear. All day I have waited for this secret meeting, pondered On all that I should say to her, how best I might enmesh Marina's haughty mind, Calling her queen of Moscow. But the hour Has come—and I remember naught, I cannot Recall the speeches I have learned by rote; Love puts imagination to confusion— But something there gleamed suddenly—a rustling; Hush—no, it was the moon's deceitful light, It was the ...
— Boris Godunov - A Drama in Verse • Alexander Pushkin
... song by rote; To each word a warbling note, Hand in hand with fairy grace Will we sing and bless ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... touch like a mother's, in its grateful coolness. The air seemed full of half-vibrations, sub-noises, that crowded it as completely as do the insect sounds of midsummer; yet she could only distinguish the ripple beneath her feet, and the rote on the distant beach, and the busy wash of waters against every shore and islet of the bay. The mist was thick around her, but she knew that above it hung the sleepless stars, and the fancy came over her that perhaps the whole vast interval, from ...
— Malbone - An Oldport Romance • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... can't kepe it heer coz ime afrade it will git stole. don't speke wun word tu a livin sole bout this coz I don't want nobodi tu kno i hav got enny mony. yu wont now wil yu. i am first rate heer, only that gude fur nuthin snipe of liz madwurth is heer yit—but i hop tu git red ov her now. yu no i rote yu bout her. give my luv to awl inquiren friends. this is from your sister ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... carpentry had been reduced to a regular science, and that the forms and models of the vessels built there were determined by fixed mathematical principles, which every skillful and intelligent workman was expected to understand and to practice upon; whereas in Holland the carpenters worked by rote, each new set following their predecessors by a sort of mechanical imitation, without being governed by any principles or theory ...
— Peter the Great • Jacob Abbott
... funeral shroud. The dead, being thus enrobed, is placed in a recumbent posture at the most conspicuous part of the lodge and viewed in rotation by the mourning relatives previously summoned by a courier, all preserving uniformity in the piercing screams which would seem to have been learned by rote. ...
— A Further Contribution to the Study of the Mortuary Customs of the North American Indians • H.C. Yarrow
... unrolls the Meaning of Things, no revelation of that wondrous distillation of the Spirit of man, but an endless marching and counter-marching up and down the map, weary columns of figures to be learned by rote instantly to be forgotten again. "On June the 7th General So-and-so proceeded with his whole army—" where? What does it matter? One little chapter of Carlyle, illuminated by a teacher of understanding, were worth a million such text-books. Alas, for the hatred of Virgil! "Paret" (a shiver), "begin ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... carefully wrapped in canvas. Solemnly he hooked behind his ears a pair of huge, horn-rimmed spectacles and knelt beside the dying pirate. In the manner of a priest the buccaneer intoned a chapter of Holy Writ which he appeared to know by rote. Then he said a prayer in a powerful broken voice. Silence followed. The others waited with bared ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... is the day of the ordered life And the law which all obey. We toil by rote and speak by note And never a soul dare stray. Ever among us a lean old man Keepeth his watch and ward, Crying, "The Lord hath set you free: Prepare ye the way ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... note: the landing of illegal immigrants from Indonesia's Rote Island has become an ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... for the average student and the average teacher. For the reconstruction of a lecture from notes means an essay in original work, in original thinking; while the recitation lapses all too readily into textbook rote and ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... modest, blooming Peer, Who bow'd with easy grace, and offer'd there Some fine-spun Verses which he never wrote, Some worthy Speeches which he spoke by rote: For thus I heard surrounding tongues rehearse, "H—— wrote the Speeches, H—— composed the Verse." And soon amid the mingled heap there lay The blasted wishes for Hibernian sway. And here he sigh'd, and, as I thought, a tear Rose in his sullen eye, but linger'd ...
— The First of April - Or, The Triumphs of Folly: A Poem Dedicated to a Celebrated - Duchess. By the author of The Diaboliad. • William Combe
... wickedness. There was nothing plausible about him. His voice was harsh. Treachery was written in all the lines of his yellow face. He had no invention, no presence of mind, and could do little more than repeat by rote the ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... not a member of any church, although her nature was deeply religious. Hers was the religion the soul inculcates, not that which is learned by rote in the temple. She was a Christian because she thought Christ the greatest figure in world history, and also because her own conduct of life was modelled upon Christian principles and virtues. She was religious for religion's sake and not for public ostentation. ...
— The Lion and The Mouse - A Story Of American Life • Charles Klein
... neist, the Guard relieves, [next] An' Orthodoxy raibles, [rattles by rote] Tho' in his heart he weel believes An' thinks it auld wives' fables: But, faith! the birkie wants a Manse, [fellow] So cannilie he hums them; [prudently, humbugs] Altho' his carnal wit an' sense Like hafflins-wise o'ercomes him [nearly ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... grammar is not taught thus: boys are introduced to a jargon about matters meaningless, and they are naturally as much enchanted as if they were listening to a chimaera bombinans in vacuo. The grammar, to them, is a mere buzz in a chaos of nonsense. They have to learn the buzz by rote; and a pleasant process that is—a seductive initiation into the mysteries. When they struggle so far as to be allowed to try to read a piece of Greek prose, they are only like the Marchioness in her experience of beer: ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang
... out of the school, and the Seven against Thebes was commenced with great energy. Often during the next hour and a half Mrs Crawley from the kitchen would hear him reading out, or rather saying by rote, with sonorous, rolling voice, great passages from some chorus, and she was very thankful to the bishop who had sent over to them a message and a messenger which had been so salutary in their effect upon her husband. "In truth an angel of the church," she ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... eaten with gusto toast made by my own hand, not at all understanding why that member should be accounted too august for such employment. Even so in my later life. Loth to obey, loth to command. Convention (for she too frightens me) has made me accept what servants would do for me by rote. But I would liefer have it ill-done than ask even the least mettlesome of them to do it better, and far liefer, if they would only be off and not do it at all, do it for myself. In Italy—dear Italy, where I have lived much—servants do still regard service somewhat in the old way, as a sort ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... the great mass of writers followed one another so servilely,—they wrote so much by rote, and so little from experience or real knowledge, that all seemed cold and formal, uninteresting and unprofitable. It was a rare thing to come across a writer that touched the heart, ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... this desire, if she had seen a time so fit; and it so ripe to be denounced. That the greatness of the cause, and the need of their return, made her say that a short time for so long a continuance ought not to pass by rote. That as cause by conference with the learned should show her matter worth utterance for their behoof, so she would more gladly pursue their good after her days, than with all her prayers while she lived be a means to linger out her living thread. ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... brought me balm: 'Twas but the tempest's central calm. Vague sinkings of the heart aver That dreadful wrong is come to her, And o'er this dream I brood and dote, And learn its agonies by rote. As if I loved it, early and late I make familiar with my fate, And feed, with fascinated will, On very dregs of finish'd ill. I think, she's near him now, alone, With wardship and protection none; Alone, perhaps, in the hindering stress Of airs that clasp him with her dress, ...
— The Victories of Love - and Other Poems • Coventry Patmore
... worth the faire gemme vertulees! Wo worth that herbe also that dooth no bote! 345 Wo worth that beautee that is routhelees! Wo worth that wight that tret ech under fote! And ye, that been of beautee crop and rote, If therwith-al in you ther be no routhe, Than is it harm ye liven, ...
— Troilus and Criseyde • Geoffrey Chaucer
... of self-importance at medical school, where they proudly endured the high pressure weeding out of any free spirit unwilling to grind away into the night for seven or more years. Anyone incapable of absorbing and regurgitating huge amounts of rote information; anyone with a disrespectful or irreverent attitude toward the senior doctor-gods who arrogantly serve as med school professors, anyone like this was eliminated with especial rapidity. When the thoroughly submissive, homogenized survivors ...
— How and When to Be Your Own Doctor • Dr. Isabelle A. Moser with Steve Solomon
... thy heart be troubled," and added, "I will go every day to the session of the leach." So he began resorting daily to the physician and committing to memory his answers and that which he spoke of jargon,[FN435] till he had gotten a great matter by rote, and all this he learned and thoroughly digested it. Then he returned to his wife and said to her, "I have stored up the physician's sayings in memory and have mastered his manner of muttering and diagnoses and prescribing remedies and I wot by heart the names of the medicines[FN436] and of all ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... art I know, I the viol well can play; I the pipe and syrinx blow; Harp and geige my hand obey; Psaltery, symphony, and rote Help to charm the listening throng; And Armonia lends its note While I ...
— Music and Some Highly Musical People • James M. Trotter
... went. He tells us how he surmounted these difficulties: sometimes by learning just enough of a language to translate into it some of the main Church formulas; sometimes by getting the help of others to patch together some pious teachings to be learned by rote; sometimes by employing interpreters; and sometimes by a mixture of various dialects, and even by signs. On one occasion he tells us that a very serious difficulty arose, and that his voyage to China was delayed because, among other things, the interpreter he had ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... forgotten it. This idea met with such general applause that Barre was forced to command the possessed nun to say aqua in Hebrew. The poor woman, who found it difficult enough to repeat correctly the few Latin words she had learned by rote, made an impatient movement, ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... sent to a rudimentary day school of girls and boys, taught by a Mr. Bowers, where he seems to have learnt nothing save to repeat monosyllables by rote. He next passed through the hands of a devout and clever clergyman, named Ross, under whom according to his own account he made astonishing progress, being initiated into the study of Roman history, and taking special delight in the battle of Regillus. Long afterwards, ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... brain and nervous system, afterwards the tissues and the bones. Thus, unversed in the deeper phases of causation, men are hurried unprepared into ranks of a noble profession to struggle as best they may, through lack of deeper knowledge, with the serious symptoms of disease—at first by rote but later, are tempted to tamper empirically ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann
... you will wunder Why I ever rote you this; I am sorry I am leevin Daddie needs me in his biz. I don't reely like this quiet Kind of sober farmer life; I like something allus doin, But for this, I'd be your wife. I got two of old Jim's bullets, Didn't like to let you know, Cause the one that you was ...
— Nancy MacIntyre • Lester Shepard Parker
... But now the Court is riz, and pears like you aint no ways better from all accounts. And tell you how we knowed. See Hannah and me, we got a letter from Mrs. Whaley as keeps the 'Farmers.' Well she rote to Hannah and me to send her up some chickins and duks and eggs and butter and other fresh frutes and vegetubbles, which she sez as they doo ask sich onlawful prices for em in the city markits as she cant conshuenshusly giv it. So she wants Hannah and me to soopli ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... half-drunk, half-sober, had huddled a friar's frock over his green cassock, and now summoning together whatever scraps of learning he had acquired by rote in former days, "Holy father," said he, "'Deus faciat salvam benignitatem vestram'—You are welcome to ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... and from inflaming brotherly love will proceed to raise that of a gallant. If we inspect into the usual process of modern courtship, we shall find it to consist in a devout turn of the eyes, called ogling; an artificial form of canting and whining, by rote, every interval, for want of other matter, made up with a shrug, or a hum; a sigh or a groan; the style compact of insignificant words, incoherences, and repetitions. These I take to be the most accomplished rules of address to a mistress; and where are these performed with more dexterity than ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... learning—'tis mother-wit. No one else sees the lady-moon sit On the sea, her nest, all night, but the owl, Hatching the boats and the long-legged fowl. When the oysters gape to sing by rote, She crams a pearl down each stupid throat. Howlowlwhitit that's wit, ...
— Cross Purposes and The Shadows • George MacDonald
... And had read every text and gloss over: Whate'er the crabbed'st author hath, He understood b' implicit faith: Whatever Skeptic could inquire for; For every WHY he had a WHEREFORE: Knew more than forty of them do, As far as words and terms could go. All which he understood by rote, And, as occasion serv'd, would quote; No matter whether right or wrong, They might be either said or sung. His notions fitted things so well, That which was which he could not tell, But oftentimes mistook the one For th' other, as great clerks have done. He could reduce all ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... lucidly and systematically educated Frenchman. It was the plan to develop "mere amateurs," I admit; but it was also the plan to develop discoverers and revolutionisers of science. For the man most likely to advance knowledge is not the man who knows in an encyclopaedic rote-work fashion the whole circle of the sciences, but the man who takes a fresh interest for its own sake in some particular branch ...
— Post-Prandial Philosophy • Grant Allen
... rest: Foes to all living worth except your own, And advocates for folly dead and gone. Authors, like coins, grow dear as they grow old; It is the rust we value, not the gold. Chaucer's worst ribaldry is learn'd by rote, And beastly Skelton[143] heads of houses quote: One likes no language but the 'Faery Queen'; A Scot will fight for 'Christ's Kirk o' the Green';[144] 40 And each true Briton is to Ben so civil, He swears the Muses met ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... nothing to pardon," said she. "It was I, whose bold behavior, unbecoming a modest and well-trained young woman, gave rise to what seemed like presumption on your part." The sense of justice was strong within her, but she made her speech haughtily and primly, as if she had learned it by rote from some maiden school-mistress, and pulled her arm away and turned to go; ...
— Evelina's Garden • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... many words of Keats that are a joyful viaticum for the walker: get these by rote ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... Count de Vergennes. The former is the most important character, because possessing the most of the confidence of the Count. He is rather cunning than wise, his views of things being neither great nor liberal. He governs himself by principles which he has learned by rote, and is fit only for the details of execution. His heart is susceptible of little passions, but not of good ones. He is brother-in-law to M. Gerard, from whom he received disadvantageous impressions of ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson
... Do you know what that means? I can't help laughing still at the trouble I used to have in trying to find out the meaning of that word fallacious, when I was at Miss Dullandoor's seminary for young ladies—hi! Hi! Some of us were excessively young ladies, and we were taught everything by rote, explanations of meanings of anything being quite ignored by Miss Dullandoor. Do you remember her sister? Oh! I'm so stupid to forget that it's exactly thirty years to-day since she died, and you can't be quite that age yet; besides, even ...
— Under the Waves - Diving in Deep Waters • R M Ballantyne
... principles of his belief. For this, indeed, Roland Graeme thought it was unnecessary to assign the true reason, which was his having made it a point of honour to forget all that Henry Warden taught him, as soon as he was no longer compelled to read it over as a lesson acquired by rote. The lessons of his new instructor, if not more impressively delivered, were received by a more willing ear, and a more awakened understanding, and the solitude of Lochleven Castle was favourable to graver thoughts than the page had hitherto ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... populists, you'll note, Of views enthusiastic, He'd learned by heart, and said by rote A creed iconoclastic; And in his dim, uncertain sight Whatever wasn't must be right, From which it follows he had strong Convictions that ...
— Fables for the Frivolous • Guy Whitmore Carryl
... to a boy's training. The time is past for the rule-and-rote method. The rule can be learned better by a manual application than by committing a sentence ...
— Electricity for Boys • J. S. Zerbe
... last is premature by half that time. Cut off in the flower of Colebrook. The Middletonian stream and all its echoes mourn. Even minnows dwindle. A parvis fiunt MINIMI. I fear to invite Mrs. Hood to our new mansion, lest she envy it, & rote [? rout] us. But when we are fairly in, I hope she will come & try it. I heard she & you were made uncomfortable by some unworthy to be cared for attacks, and have tried to set up a feeble counteraction thro' the Table Book of last Saturday. Has it not ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... that service all by rote, And there was many and many a lovely note; Some singing loud, as if they had complained; Some with their notes another manner feigned; And some did sing all ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... Perhaps the greatest disadvantage of this method is that it does not give the student the best kind of training. What he needs most in life is the ability to arrange and present ideas rapidly, not to speak a part by rote. ...
— Elements of Debating • Leverett S. Lyon
... through his mind, he heard the warders at the entrance of his tent challenge some one whose footsteps were heard approaching it. The person stopped on their challenge, and presently after was heard the sound of a rote, (a small species of lute,) the strings of which were managed by means of a small wheel. After a short prelude, a manly voice, of good compass, sung verses, which, translated into modern language, might ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... realising with a wonder beyond words how different it was. Every word, every glance between him and Betty had, hitherto, been part of a play. She had been a charming figure in a charming comedy. He had known, as it were by rote, that she had feelings—a heart, affections—but they had seemed pale, dream-like, just a delightful background to his own sensations, strong and conscious and delicate. Now for the first time he perceived her as real, a human being in the stress of a ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit
... "it ain't them. Do you hear the falls at my lake? the west wind brings that to us. When I am there and the rote is on the beach, it tells me it is the voice of the south wind giving notice of rain. All nature warns me. The swallow, the pig, the goose, the fire on the hearth, the soot in the flue, the smoke of ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... tempered in water of death, that I may despatch him the speedilier for thee." Quoth Sasan, "And welcome to thee!"; and gave her a hanger that would devance man's destiny. Now this slave women had heard stories and verses and had learned by rote great store of strange sayings and anecdotes: so she took the dagger and went out of the room, considering how she could compass his doom. Then she repaired to Kanmakan, who was sitting and awaiting news of tryst with the daughter of his uncle, Kuzia Fakan; so ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... gnawing sense of failure and uselessness, were known to her mother only as "wildness" and "low spirits," to be combated by needlework as a sedative, or beef tea as a stimulant. Mrs. Wylie had learnt by rote that the whole duty of a lady is to be graceful, charitable, helpful, modest, and disinterested whilst awaiting passively whatever lot these virtues may induce. But she had learnt by experience that a lady's business in society is to get married, and that virtues and accomplishments ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... wearied Olga, complaining of her unbearable misery, weeping, and feeling as she did so that she brought with her into the cell something impure, pitiful, shabby. And Olga repeated to her mechanically as though a lesson learnt by rote, that all this was of no consequence, that it would all pass and God ...
— The Darling and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... a pupil of the Campbell Medical School, for which purpose a skeleton, with the bones fastened together by wires was hung up in our schoolroom. And finally, time was also found for Pandit Heramba Tatwaratna to come and get us to learn by rote rules of Sanscrit grammar. I am not sure which of them, the names of the bones or the sutras of the grammarian, were the more jaw-breaking. I think the latter took ...
— My Reminiscences • Rabindranath Tagore
... section, so as to be as near the text as possible. These questions furnish an excellent topical analysis of the text.[3] In a certain sense they ask "what the book says," but the teacher is advised emphatically to discourage any such thing as committing the text to memory. The tendency to rote-learning is very strong. I had to contend with it in teaching history to seniors at Harvard twenty years ago, but much has since been done to check it through the development of the modern German seminary methods. (For ...
— Civil Government in the United States Considered with - Some Reference to Its Origins • John Fiske
... thought I might be good once. I used to say my own prayers then. Now I speak them but by rote, and feel ashamed—yes, ashamed to speak them. Is it not horrid to say them, and next morning to be no better than you were last night? Often I revolt at these as at other things, and am dumb. The Vicar comes to ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... in the rest: Foes to all living worth except your own, And advocates for folly dead and gone. Authors, like coins, grow dear as they grow old; It is the rust we value, not the gold. Chaucer's worst ribaldry is learned by rote, And beastly Skelton heads of houses quote: One likes no language but the Faery Queen; A Scot will fight for Christ's Kirk o' the Green; And each true Briton is to Ben so civil, He swears the muses met him at the Devil. ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... hope," he said by rote, "you're well, and your parents also in good health. May I have the pleasure of dancing the cotillon as your ...
— Confessions of a Book-Lover • Maurice Francis Egan
... her large letters up to N, and making her say them by rote, and with that end in view have divided them into three portions—ABCD—EFG—ILMN. She manages all right, except that she always jumps E and L. Lesson closed: "Were you at church to-day, Filomena?" ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... and fair. i am not fealing very well tonite. father dident go to boston this morning but staid to home. this morning in school we rehersed for xibision. Pricilla sung and plaid and Nipper rote down the geese sum on the blackboard and rote his name under it jest as good as he cood. i wanted to rite Nipper under it but old Francis wood paist time out of me if he found out who rote it. you aught to hear Pricil play and sing. he sings do your best for one another making ...
— 'Sequil' - Or Things Whitch Aint Finished in the First • Henry A. Shute
... the maladies of her body, that she found relief to her over-burdened soul in prayer. She no longer prayed with a book, mechanically and by rote, but mentally, with earnestness, and with the understanding. And she prayed directly to God Almighty, and thereby came, she says, to love Him. And with prayer came new virtues. She now ceases to speak ill of people, and persuades others to cease from ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VII • John Lord
... came good lawes, that is to saie, the wicked and beastlie life of man, their iniurius beha- uiour, sekyng to frame themselues from men to beastes mo- [Sidenote: Euil maners was the occa- sion of good Lawes.] ued the wise and Godlie, elders to ordaine certaine meanes, to rote discipline, whereby the wickedlie disposed personne [Fol. xxxiiij.v] should bee compelled to liue in order, to obeie Godlie lawes, to the vpholdyng of societie. Therefore, all suche as dissolue lawes, caste doune good order, and state of common ...
— A booke called the Foundacion of Rhetorike • Richard Rainolde
... you yesterday before the court,' no doubt," he interrupted, "and I remember perfectly that you were 'awakened only.' I could repeat the most of it by rote, indeed. But do you suppose that I ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... first class. I was particularly struck with the very clear manner in which the lad under examination replied to the questions put to him, and I began to suspect it was merely something he had learnt by rote; but the professor dodged him about in such a heartless manner with his "whys" and his "wherefores," his "how do you knows" and "how do you proves," that I quite trembled for the victim. Vain fears on my part; nothing could put him out; he seemed as much ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... is me opinyon: I don't think Cap. Dhryfuss wr-rote th' borderoo. I think he was th' on'y man in Fr-rance that didn't. But I ain't got as high an opinyon iv th' Cap as I had. I ain't no purity brigade; but, th' older I get, th' more I think wan wife's enough f'r ...
— Mr. Dooley: In the Hearts of His Countrymen • Finley Peter Dunne
... frightened me a great deal; Juliet and Belvidera scarcely anybody can do ill, but Euphrasia I thought few people could do well, and I feared I was not one of them. Moreover, the language is at once so poor and so bombastic that I took double the time in getting the part by rote I should have taken for any part of Shakespeare's. My dress was beautiful; I think I will tell it you. You know you told me even an account of hat and feathers would interest you. My skirt was made immensely full and with a long train; it was of white merino, ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... mechanical learning, in preference to rational learning. But this surely is also the characteristic of the European peasant. He will never commit things to memory by thinking of their meaning, if he can learn them by rote. ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... thou hast sent." In these words is the sufficient defence of Protestantism. It was the cry of the soul to know God, and not merely to assent to what the Church taught concerning him; it was the longing to know Christ, and not to repeat by rote the creeds of the first centuries, and the definitions of mediaeval doctors in regard to him. In a subsequent chapter we shall consider the truth and error in the Protestant principle of justification by faith. Our purpose here is to show that the truth in Orthodoxy is identical with the truth ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... works with a rollicking stave at lip, And loud is the chorus skirled; With the burly rote of his rumbling throat He ...
— Ballads of Lost Haven - A Book of the Sea • Bliss Carman
... with his shoures sote The droghte of Marche hath perced to the rote, And bathed every veyne in swich licour Of which vertu engendred is the flour; Whan Zephirus eek with his swete breeth 5 Inspired hath in every holt and heeth The tendre croppes, and the yong sonne Hath in the Ram his halfe cours y ronne, And smale fowles maken melodye, ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... morning at the office, among other things with Cooper the Purveyor, whose dullness in his proceeding in his work I was vexed at, and find that though he understands it may be as much as other men that profess skill in timber, yet I perceive that many things, they do by rote, and very dully. Thence home to dinner, whither Captain Grove came and dined with me, he going into the country to-day; among other discourse he told me of discourse very much to my honour, both as to my care and ability, happening at the Duke of Albemarle's table ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... shameless, more intelligent, more capable, less restrained. He is rising against his tradition, and almost against his will. The serf still bulks large in him. The whole trend of circumstance is to substitute science for mere rote skill in him, to demand initiative and an intelligent self-adaptation to new discoveries and new methods, to make him a professional man and a job and pieceworker after the fashion of the great majority ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... as for his fibre, there was nothing advantageous in it. He was little: his head was large and his legs small; his features were not disagreeable, but he was affected in his carriage and behaviour. All his wit consisted in expressions learnt by rote, which he occasionally employed either in raillery, or in love. This was the whole foundation of the merit of a ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton
... he knew by rote, He could preach like Chrysostome, From the Fathers he could quote, He had even been at Rome. A learned clerk, A man of mark, Was this Thangbrand, ...
— Tales of a Wayside Inn • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... sort to fashion his visage and frame his phrases to this or that woman. His oncoming was rapid. He could measure, cut, and wrap in a parcel twelve yards of brown or white calico quicker than any one in the shop, and he understood by rote the folds of linen tablecloths and bedsheets; and in the town this was said of him: "Shopmen quite ordinary can sell what a customer wants; Pugh Rees Jones ...
— My Neighbors - Stories of the Welsh People • Caradoc Evans
... on all sides; a thing that was a century since denied what they call Christian burial; a thing that is still deemed for a woman disgraceful, and for a man degrading and emasculate; a thing that is mute as a dunce save when, parrot-like, it repeats by rote with a mirthless grin or a tearless sob; a wooden doll, as you say, applauded as a brave puppet in its prime, hissed at in its first hour of failure or decay; a thing made up of tinsel and paint, and patchwork, of the tailor's ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... delighteth not in the death of a sinner, but would rather that he should be converted and live. The beautiful prayers in the Liturgy, were explained to them in a manner suitable to their different capacities; consequently, they were not repeated by rote, as is too frequently the case, where the same attention is not paid. Mr. and Mrs. Bernard took unremitted pains with their children, and felt themselves amply rewarded by their conduct; for though, like other human beings, they were fallible, and, consequently, often ...
— Domestic pleasures - or, the happy fire-side • F. B. Vaux
... flowers, condited in vinegar, salt, sugar, or sweet wine, and so keeping all the yeare long; any hearbes, fruit, or flowers in pickle; also pickle it selfe. Fr. compote, stewed fruit. The Recipe for Compost in the Forme of Cury, Recipe 100 (C), p.49-50, is "Take rote of p{er}sel. pasternak of rases. scrape hem and waische he{m} clene. take rap{is} & caboch{is} ypared and icorne. take an erthen pa{n}ne w{i}t{h} clene wat{er}, & set it on the fire. cast all ise {er}inne. whan ey buth boiled, ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various
... often sliding from one tune to another in the same line or improvising as he went on. Finally, in 1721, the Rev. Thomas Walter of Roxbury, Mass., published a treatise, upon the grounds or rules of music or an introduction to the art of singing by rote, containing twenty-four tunes harmonized into three parts. The attempt to supersede the old Puritan tunes and restrict the liberty of the individual singers met with the greatest opposition and was long successfully resisted in all the churches in New England, ...
— The Two Hundredth Anniversary of the Settlement of the Town of New Milford, Conn. June 17th, 1907 • Daniel Davenport
... recitals which take place yearly in the musical centers of Europe, only a comparatively small number are of real musical interest. In many cases it seems as though the players were merely repeating something learned by rote, in an unknown language; just as though I should repeat a poem in Italian. The words I might pronounce after a fashion, but the meaning of most of them would be a blank to me—so how could I ...
— Piano Mastery - Talks with Master Pianists and Teachers • Harriette Brower
... ordinary things of design and decoration have sifted down and gathered together, so that foolish ornament gains a cumulative force and achieves a conspicuous commonness. Stem and petal and leaf—the fluent forms that a man has not by heart but certainly by rote—are woven, printed, cast, and stamped wherever restlessness and insimplicity have feared to leave plain spaces. The most ugly of all imaginable rooms, which is probably the parlour of a farm-house arrayed for those whom Americans call summer-boarders, is beset with ...
— The Rhythm of Life • Alice Meynell
... willed it, she bethought her that Margot Poins was to go to a nunnery. That afternoon she had decided that Mary Trelyon, who was her second maid, should become her first, and others be moved up in a rote. ...
— The Fifth Queen Crowned • Ford Madox Ford
... man of no small talents and humour. Attracted first by Miss Fotheringay's beauty, he began to teach her how to act. He shrieked out in his cracked voice the parts, and his pupil learned them from his lips by rote, and repeated them in her full rich tones. He indicated the attitudes, and set and moved those beautiful arms of hers. Those who remember this grand actress on the stage can recall how she used always precisely the same gestures, looks, and tones; how she stood ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... wonderful power became impaired so far that getting by rote the compositions of others was no longer an involuntary process. He has noted in his Lucan the several occasions on which he committed to memory his favourite passages of an author whom he regarded as unrivalled among rhetoricians; and the dates refer to 1836, when ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan |
