"Unlearn" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... few lawyers coming from the common-law States, have ever been able to succeed in Louisiana, especially after having practised in other States for any length of time. They have not only to learn the civil law, but to unlearn the common. Some, who did not know the extraordinary powers of Prentiss's mind, feared he, like many others who had made the attempt, would fail; but, almost from the moment of his advent at the New Orleans bar, his success ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... English clergyman by the name of Penrose, and she wrote English history as such a person might be supposed to write it. With every intention to be honest, her book has many facts and opinions which boys and girls will have to take more time to unlearn than they spent in learning, unless they intend to ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various
... As a beginner, her first steps were necessarily slow; but she took pains, and had no bad habits or evil accents to unlearn, and after a while she "got hold" of the language and went on more rapidly. Marian's fluent chatter stimulated her to try to talk as fast also, though Mademoiselle Bougereau, their teacher, found a great deal of fault ...
— A Little Country Girl • Susan Coolidge
... hard thing to break through a habit, and a yet harder thing to go contrary to our own will. Yet if thou overcome not slight and easy obstacles, how shalt thou overcome greater ones? Withstand thy will at the beginning, and unlearn an evil habit, lest it lead thee little by little into worse difficulties. Oh, if thou knewest what peace to thyself thy holy life should bring to thyself, and what joy to others, methinketh thou wouldst be more zealous ...
— The Imitation of Christ • Thomas a Kempis
... any other Persons who have the Conduct of Youth, and have any serious Concern for the Souls of their Children, or of those that are committed to their Care, satisfie their Consciences, without Restraining them from going to a place of such Impiety and Infection; where they would be in the way to unlearn the best Instructions of their Parents and Governours; where Pride and Falshood, Malice and Revenge, Injustice and Immodesty, Contempt of Marriage, and false Notions of Honour, are recommended; where Men are taught to call ...
— Representation of the Impiety and Immorality of the English Stage (1704); Some Thoughts Concerning the Stage in a Letter to a Lady (1704) • Anonymous
... again for the bundle. "It is only natural. If I had been told in advance, I could not have believed it. I could not have believed that mock marriages occur anywhere except in cheap fiction. But we live and unlearn. Now I must run." ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... which these observations convey is, Be, and not seem. Let us acquiesce. Let us take our bloated nothingness out of the path of the divine circuits. Let us unlearn our wisdom of the world. Let us lie low in the Lord's power and learn that truth ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... these things, preachers formerly said very little, but urged the necessity of puerile and useless works, such as certain holy-days, fasts, brotherhoods, pilgrimages, worship of saints, rosaries, monastic vows, &c. These useless things, our adversaries, having been admonished, now unlearn, and no longer teach as formerly. Moreover, they now begin to make mention of faith, about which they formerly observed a marvellous [sic] silence. They now teach, that we are not justified by works alone, but join faith to works, and maintain ...
— American Lutheranism Vindicated; or, Examination of the Lutheran Symbols, on Certain Disputed Topics • Samuel Simon Schmucker
... of practice, which, to the eyes of common observers, has the air of a learned composition, and bears a sort of superficial resemblance to the manner of the great men who went before them. I know this perfectly well; but I know likewise, that a man looking for real and lasting reputation must unlearn much of the common-place method so observable in the works of the artists whom I have named. For my own part, I confess, I take more interest in and am more captivated with the powerful impression of nature, which Gainsborough exhibited in his portraits and in his landscapes, ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... besides, for Mrs. Thackeray's not young, that's clear enough; and I know there's a good many things that she's not ignorant of. She's precious knowing about many things that don't do her much good; and if the books could unlearn her, I'd say for one let her keep 'em. But as for looking at Margaret's books—why, Brother Cross, ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... examinations and is allowed to pass current for genuine English, diminishes instead of increasing the power that our pupils should possess over their native language. By getting marks at school and college for construing good Greek and Latin into bad English, our pupils systematically unlearn what they may have been allowed to pick up from Milton and ...
— How to Write Clearly - Rules and Exercises on English Composition • Edwin A. Abbott
... for man, and as you have given much study to the works and ways and reputed words of the All-seeing One, I want you to aid me in helping men to look upward—to soar like the eagle above the things of earth, as well as to consider the interests of others, and so, as far as may be, unlearn selfishness. Will you join ...
— The Hot Swamp • R.M. Ballantyne
... visit the Hafod Schools. These excellent schools—one for boys, one for girls, and one for infants—were erected about six years ago, and are still maintained at the expense of the Messrs Vivian. At the time of our visit, there were 600 of the rising population of the place doing their utmost to unlearn the Welsh idiom, and to acquire the art of speaking and writing the English language with propriety. We regret that we cannot dwell on this the most gratifying circumstance of our visit. Messrs Vivian & Sons are unquestionably great copper-smelters, but, in our humble opinion, the ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 458 - Volume 18, New Series, October 9, 1852 • Various
... as to whether a certain dress should be dyed to match a certain shawl? Well! why not? Because women learn the use of the quill, are they to ignore "featherses "? Because they learn science, must they unlearn the arts, and, above all, the art of being beautiful? If men have lost it, they have reason to regret the loss. Let women hold to it, while yet ...
— Women and the Alphabet • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... who have eaten of the tree of knowledge cannot forget—"Mr. Chesterton cries out, like the Cyclops in the play, against those who complicate the life of man, and tells us to eat 'caviare on impulse,' instead of 'grapenuts on principle.' But since we cannot unlearn our knowledge, Mr. Chesterton is only telling us to eat caviare on principle." The binding fact we must face in all our calculations, and so in politics too, is that you cannot recover what is passed. That is why educated people are ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... shocked at hearing my brother doubt the authenticity of the Epistle to the Hebrews; and then, as it appeared to him, she tried to make him violate the duties of examination and candour which he had learnt too thoroughly to unlearn. Thereon came pain and an estrangement which was none the less profound for being mutually concealed. It seemed to my mother that he would not give up the wilfulness of his own opinions for her and for his Redeemer's sake. To him it seemed ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... dandelion that there were no books, and it came upon me, believe me, as a great surprise, for I had lived quite certain that I was surrounded with them. It is nothing but unlearning, I find now; five thousand books to unlearn. ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... I only hope she will help me to unlearn some of the things I know. I never saw such ...
— A Mountain Woman and Others • (AKA Elia Wilkinson) Elia W. Peattie
... work we must make haste slowly. We have some things to unlearn and many things to learn. We hope to be able in a few years to make a worthwhile contribution to such an interesting and important subject as nut growing in ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Fifteenth Annual Meeting • Various
... agriculture is greatly defective. It is susceptible of much improvement. How shall we effect this improvement? The old are too old to learn, or, rather, to unlearn what have been the habits of their lives. The young cannot learn as they ought to learn, and as the public interests require, because they have no suitable school for their instruction. We have no place where they can learn the principles ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... that at school, nor at school was it possible he should unlearn it. He acquired that belief from his home, from the conversation of his equals, from the behaviour of his inferiors; he found it in the books and newspapers he has read, he breathed it in with his native air. He regards ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... so subtilely and gradually that she was almost unaware of it herself, this inward change in herself. Nora had by nature a quick and active mind, but she had also many inherited prejudices. It is a truism that it is much harder to unlearn than to learn, and for her it was harder, in the circumstances, than for the average person. Not that she was more set in her ways than other people, but that she had accepted from her childhood a definite set of ideas as to the ...
— The Land of Promise • D. Torbett
... be crying; if you choose you may be just as the same as any other lady—and you shall; and you will be very much admired, I can tell you, if only you will take the trouble to quite unlearn all your odd words and ways, and dress yourself like other people; and I will take care of that if you let me; and I think you are very clever, Milly; and I know you ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... practical purposes these differences are unimportant, but to the painter they are all-important: the painter has to unlearn the habit of thinking that things seem to have the colour which common sense says they 'really' have, and to learn the habit of seeing things as they appear. Here we have already the beginning of one of the distinctions that cause most trouble in philosophy—the distinction between 'appearance' ...
— The Problems of Philosophy • Bertrand Russell
... from thence to Merchant Taylor's, where he received his first taste of letters; for he always reckoned that time which he spent at the former school as lost, since he had only contracted bad habits, and was obliged to unlearn what ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. IV • Theophilus Cibber
... do, because nations are composed of very different individuals, and I know only one to the million; but I do take on me to say that the individual Herr who executed Doctor Faustus at Homburg that night had everything to learn, except what he had to unlearn. His person was obese; his delivery of the words was mouthing, chewing, and gurgling; and he uttered the notes in tune, but without point, pathos, or passion; a steady lay-clerk from York or Durham Cathedral would have done a ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... primitive ideas which has caused surgeons and gynaecologists to dread operations during the catamenial period. Such, at all events, is the opinion of a distinguished authority, Dr. William Goodell, who wrote in 1891[372]: "I have learned to unlearn the teaching that women must not be subjected to a surgical operation during the monthly flux. Our forefathers, from time immemorial, have thought and taught that the presence of a menstruating woman would pollute solemn religious rites, would sour milk, spoil the fermentation in wine-vats, ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... that I have naturally a horror for most vices. The answer of Antisthenes to him who asked him, which was the best apprenticeship "to unlearn evil," seems to point at this. I have them in horror, I say, with a detestation so natural, and so much my own, that the same instinct and impression I brought of them with me from my nurse, I yet retain, and no temptation whatever ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... the idea of putting them through some course of military training, but Lochiel urged so many and such weighty reasons against it that he gave up the plan. "There is not time," said the sagacious old chief, "for our men to learn your method of warfare. They would merely unlearn their own. This is one which must seem strange to your notions of war; but it is one which they thoroughly understand, and which makes them, when led by such a general as you, a match for the most practised veterans. Think of what ...
— Claverhouse • Mowbray Morris
... prefer to hire employes that never worked before so that they have nothing to unlearn. They are then not trained, but have no bad business habits to overcome. They are more easily guided and grasp the new methods more effectively because they are not contrary to what they have already learned. They ...
— The Power of Concentration • Theron Q. Dumont
... time to learn a chicken a thing, but a heap longer to unlearn him. After that two or three of these yere automobeels went by every day, all a-blowin' of their horns, all kickin' up a hell of a dust. And every time them fourteen Honk-honks of mine took along after ...
— Arizona Nights • Stewart Edward White
... inductive research; although, when we had fairly recovered our composure, and bad leisurely excogitated the matter, we might have come to conclude that the new doctrine was better than the old one, after all, at least for those who had nothing to unlearn. ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... should be content to devote two or three of his first days to the Nursery slopes, learning the elements of good Ski-ing before dashing off on an excursion. As I know from painful experience, there is much to unlearn in what one has picked up by the light of Nature. Scrambling down a run, crashing and sitting on one's Skis, may be great fun the first day, but is tiring and humiliating as time goes on. It is infinitely preferable to learn the knack of Ski-ing tidily, and thereby ...
— Ski-running • Katharine Symonds Furse
... this is your mind, had better reconcile yourself now to living like an ordinary man; you will give up your extravagant haughty hopes and put yourself on a level with the commonalty; if you are sensible, you will not be ashamed to unlearn in your old age, and change your ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... may thus be said to consist in leading the mind of the pupil over certain lines of thought till it becomes "natural" or spontaneous for him to go by that road. Much time is wasted in schools where the pupil's mind is not led aright at first, for then he has to unlearn habits of thought which are already formed. The work of the teacher is to impress good methods of studying and thinking upon the minds of his pupils, rather ...
— Pedagogics as a System • Karl Rosenkranz
... devout kind. He was sorry. He believed they were a narrow and prejudiced sort of people, given to laying down the law and erecting barricades across other people's paths. He was sorry this fair girl was one of them. But she was a lovely specimen. Could she unlearn these ways, perhaps? But now, what was she going to bring forth to him out of the Bible? He watched the fingers that turned the leaves; pretty fingers enough, and delicate, but not very white. Gardening ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner
... Despite the fact that Italian populations still remained under the rule of the Empire, the melancholy book of Austrian dominion in Italy might be fairly said to be closed forever. A new era was dawning for the House of Hapsburg, which was to show that, unlike the Bourbons, it could learn and unlearn. ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... think now that the full length Preparatory encroaches on the Antique. Sometimes they even let you put in backgrounds here, but it don't matter much: when the instructor in the Antique gets hold of you he makes you unlearn everything you've learnt in the ...
— The Coast of Bohemia • William Dean Howells
... a pleasant sin: Repent with me, for I repent. Woe's me the lore I must unlearn! Woe's me that easy way we went, So rugged when I would return! How long until my sleep begin, How long shall stretch these nights and days? Surely, clean Angels cry, she prays; She laves her soul with tedious tears: How long must stretch these years ...
— Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems • Christina Rossetti
... given you at your word, You find abundantly detestable. For me, I think I speak as I was taught; I always see the garden and God there A-making man's wife: and, my lesson learned, The value and significance of flesh, I can't unlearn ten ...
— Men and Women • Robert Browning
... other mouth. Even the grave and serious characters are distinguished by their several sorts of gravity: their discourses are such as belong to their age, their calling, and their breeding; such as are becoming of them, and of them only. Some of his persons are vicious, and some virtuous; some are unlearn'd, or (as Chaucer calls them) lewd, and some are learn'd. Even the ribaldry of the low characters is different: the Reeve, the Miller, and the Cook are several men, and distinguished from each other, as much ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... in th' shack," replied Mr. Cassidy. "Cayuses know so much that it takes a month to unlearn them. I wouldn't like to bet they ain't ...
— Hopalong Cassidy's Rustler Round-Up - Bar-20 • Clarence Edward Mulford
... answer. He had yet to unlearn Captain Clubbe's unconscious teaching that a man's feelings are his own concern and no other has any interest or right to share in them, except one woman, and even she ...
— The Last Hope • Henry Seton Merriman
... of the Great Spirit. If you will return to your cabins, and forget the things that were taught you, and unlearn the tongue of the white man, to use again the language of your fathers—if, instead of the rifle, you will shoot with the bow, and cause the arrow to whistle instead of the bullet—if you will cease to give the spoils of the chace and the produce of your fields for beads and strong ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 3 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... loud fit of exultant laughter. "You've already got it!" he cried. "There's no need of explaining anything more to you! Any further explanations will, in lieu of benefiting you, make you unlearn what you've learnt. Were you therefore to, at once, set to work, and versify, your lines are ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... for mortals to unlearn Beliefs bred in the marrow of their bones! How hard it is for mortals to discern The truth that preaches from the silent stones, The silent hills, the silent universe, While Error cries in sanctimonious tones That all the light of life ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... have employed nearly as many to clean and furbish the capacious body of the modern vehicle. There was moreover a whole armoury of harness to mend and polish; and as the six long-tailed Flemish horses were not often in the traces together, some time was required by them to unlearn the rustic habits of the farm-yard, and to regain the stately trot at which, where the roads would admit of it, they ordinarily proceeded. The following description of a journey to London by an M.P. of 1699 will convey to the reader a lively yet tolerably exact conception both of the glory and ...
— Old Roads and New Roads • William Bodham Donne
... replied my father, "and I do not like saying them, but there is no royal road to unlearning, and you have much to unlearn. Still, you Musical Bank people bear witness to the fact that beyond the kingdoms of this world there is another, within which the writs of this world's kingdoms do not run. This is the great service which our church does for us in England, and hence many of us uphold ...
— Erewhon Revisited • Samuel Butler
... great lot to tell," Benton responded. "I'm just beginning to get on my feet. A raw, untried youngster has a lot to learn and unlearn when he hits this tall timber. I've been out here five years, and I'm just beginning to realize what I'm equal to and what I'm not. I'm crawling over a hump now that would have been a lot easier if the governor hadn't come to grief the way he did. He was going to put in some money this ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... meal; The shepherd placed a seat and pressed To their poor fare the unknown guest, And he unclasped his mantle now, And raised the covering from his brow, Said, voyagers by land and sea Were seldom feasted daintily, And cheered his host by adding stern He'd no refinement to unlearn. ...
— The Three Brontes • May Sinclair
... and the truest in their influence, are works of fiction. They do not pin the reader to a dogma, which he must afterwards discover to be inexact; they do not teach a lesson, which he must afterwards unlearn. They repeat, they rearrange, they clarify the lessons of life; they disengage us from ourselves, they constrain us to the acquaintance of others; and they show us the web of experience, not as we can ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... . . the day came, and the ignorant fellow found he had other things to learn. And he was quicker than his educated countrymen, for he had nothing to unlearn. ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... freedom. I had no guardian, trustees, sisters, brothers, or any connection in the world to look after me. I grew up, therefore, utterly without education. This much was to my advantage; I learned none of that deceitful rubbish taught in schools, and so had nothing to unlearn when I awakened to my true love—mathematics, higher mathematics and higher geometry. These, however, I seemed to know instinctively. It was like the memory of what I had deeply studied before; the principles were in my blood, and I simply raced through the ordinary stages, ...
— Three More John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... not of words, but of deeds, was, as it were, in an impregnable fortress that could neither crumble into ruin nor be lost by treachery. And so Antisthenes, being asked what was the most essential point of learning, answered, "To unlearn what is evil." That is to say, to the Cynic conception, men were born with a root of evil in them in the love of pleasure; the path of wisdom was a weaning of soul and body by practice from the allurements of pleasure, until both were so perfectly ...
— A Short History of Greek Philosophy • John Marshall
... paid to these primary principles and to correct articulation, a large majority of students will graduate from our common schools prepared to advance in the art of elocution or of singing without being obliged first to unlearn a vast amount of error and to correct a long ...
— Resonance in Singing and Speaking • Thomas Fillebrown
... have an income of $20.00 a week. "Well," said the visitor, "that is very little money on which to raise a family." The agent felt that this visitor had not only a great deal to learn, but a great deal to unlearn. ...
— Friendly Visiting among the Poor - A Handbook for Charity Workers • Mary Ellen Richmond
... rejoicing over what has been done. For, after all, the truth is, that Scottish Archaeology is still so much in its infancy, that it is only now beginning to guess its powers, and feel its deficiencies. It has still no end of lessons to learn, and perhaps some to unlearn, before it can manage to extract the true metal of knowledge from the ore and dross of exaggeration in which many of its inquiries have become enveloped. At this present hour we virtually know far less ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson
... &c. n., have no head. forget one's own name, have on the tip of one's tongue, come in one ear and go out the other. slip memory, escape memory, fade from memory, die away from the memory; lose, lose sight of. fail to recall, not be able to recall. [cause oneself to forget: transitive] unlearn; efface &c. 552 , discharge from the memory; consign to oblivion, consign to the tomb of the Capulets; think no more of &c. (turn the attention from) 458; cast behind one's back, wean one's thoughts from; let bygones be bygones &c.(forgive) 918. Adj. forgotten &c. v.; unremembered, past recollection, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... brimming with the modern passion for efficiency, learned foreign tongues, and browsed in the musty archives, he would have discovered that there was much to unlearn. The early scribes piled fancy upon invention, believing or pretending that Rembrandt was a miser, a profligate, a spendthrift, and so on. "Houbraken's facts," we read, "are interwoven with a mass of those suspicious anecdotes ...
— Rembrandt • Mortimer Menpes
... laws and way of living Shall all be Greek. They shall unlearn their language, And learn the lovely speech of Antioch. Where hast thou been to-day? ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... of insects. The word holiness reminds him of crowds of pilgrims flocking to some famous shrine, or of some anchorite sitting lost in religions abstraction till his legs rot off. He has much error to unlearn before he can take ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... was ordered to appear before the court and, on his refusal, was declared an outlaw. His eldest son was captured at the University of Louvain and sent to the Spanish court that he might unlearn the principles in which he had ...
— Heroes of Modern Europe • Alice Birkhead
... prosperity, intimately united as they are, go on before his eyes; he does not conceive that one can subsist without the other; he has therefore nothing to forget: nor has he, like so many Europeans, to unlearn the lessons of his ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al
... Peace and the quiet room—away into her future, which the young girl seemed to see just then, with grave, prophetic glance; a future of difficulty, struggle, temptation; of old habits and old teachings to be battled with; of new ones to be formed; of much to learn and unlearn, and try, and try again; but perhaps—she still seemed to see with the young girl's earnest eyes that for the moment had quite outgrown the child—a future faithfully lived and well; not frittered away in beautiful playing only, but filled ...
— Gypsy's Cousin Joy • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... the morbid car of some medieval monk, which has banished, say, consecutive fifths from what is called g pure writing '; that further, you need only to have the regulation number of years behind you, to fling squeamishness to the winds. In other words, you learn rules to unlearn them with infinite pains. But the pupil, in his innocence, demands a rigid basis to go on—it is a human weakness, this, the craving for rules—and his teachers pamper him. Instead of saying: develop your own ear, rely on yourself, only what you teach yourself ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... finally, that the standard by which the Negro is measured is seriously at fault, if not wholly wrong. Coming out of the most untoward circumstances, with less than a half century in which to outlive and unlearn the deadly doings of two hundred and fifty years, who can lay claim to more or to so much as the Negro? Measure him by the depths from which he came as well as by the heights which you would have him attain, when taking ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... iridescent-gray plumage and pink-shod feet to match the rest of her—shouldn't be thrust into any general menagerie-cage, but be kept for the dovecote and the garden, kept where we may still hear her coo. That's what, at college, they'll make her unlearn; she'll learn to roar and snarl with the other animals. Think of the vocal sounds with which she may come back to us!" Mother appeared to think, but asked me, after a moment, as a result of it, in which of the cages of the New York Art League menagerie, ...
— The Whole Family - A Novel by Twelve Authors • William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mary Heaton Vorse, Mary Stewart Cutting, Elizabeth Jo
... this Floyd Grandon arrives. Cecil captures him in wildest delight. Violet is glad to meet him first before all these people; alas for love when it longs for no secrecy! She colors and a sweet light glows in her face, she cannot unlearn her lesson all at once. Then she is quiet, lady-like, composed. Floyd watches her with a curious sensation. It is a new air of being mistress, of having ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... DeVere. "Well, our living problem is solved for us, anyway. Now I must study my new part. It is to be a sort of society drama, and will be put on in a few days. Mr. Pertell gave me some instructions. I shall have to unlearn many things that are traditional with those who have played all their parts in a real theatre. It is like teaching an old dog new tricks, but I dare say I ...
— The Moving Picture Girls - First Appearances in Photo Dramas • Laura Lee Hope
... of the obscurest place, No measure ta'en from knowledge, all from grace. Study and pains were now no more their care; Texts were explain'd by fasting and by prayer: This was the fruit the private spirit brought; Occasion'd by great zeal and little thought. While crowds unlearn'd, with rude devotion warm, About the sacred viands buzz and swarm. The fly-blown text creates a crawling brood, And turns to maggots what was meant for food. 420 A thousand daily sects rise up and die; A thousand more the perish'd race supply; So all we make of Heaven's discover'd ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... enlightened reason; and this letter shows that he himself has been moving rapidly in the direction in which Buenderlin and Denck were travelling, though neither now nor at any time was Franck a mere copier of other men's ideas.[5] "We must unlearn," he writes, "all that we have learned from our youth up from the papists, and we must change everything we have got from the Pope or from Luther and Zwingli." He predicts that the external Church will never be set up again, "for the inward ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... dreaded. The unskilled, untaught musician may approach Wagner boldly; for there is no possibility of a misunderstanding between them: The Ring music is perfectly single and simple. It is the adept musician of the old school who has everything to unlearn: and him I ...
— The Perfect Wagnerite - A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring • George Bernard Shaw
... the life problem, is it? Poor little girl, she has got to learn something which the average girl has to unlearn; where they entirely trust their fellow-beings, she entirely distrusts them. I wonder if I shall ever be able to show her the middle path?" Telling the porter to wait a moment, Miss Preston slipped into the library, ...
— Caps and Capers - A Story of Boarding-School Life • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... nations can learn and unlearn a language. The Irish, adopting the language of their English conquerors, is one of many examples of the same sort in history. What effects upon language took place, prior to recorded history, from the mingling of tribes and peoples, it is impossible ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher |
