"Copybook" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a mannerism so fixed as to be part of the nature, and consequently are difficult of eradication. As a matter of fact a peculiarity in handwriting is more often cultivated than controlled, many writers regarding a departure from orthodox copybook form as an evidence of an ...
— The Detection of Forgery • Douglas Blackburn
... education. Reduce the percentage of illiteracy. Let the public schools teach not only reading and writing, but let public schools teach all the principles of American popular government. [Applause.] Let us go back to the days in which I was taught to write, when the copybook bore a text taken from Poor Richard—"Industry and frugality lead to wealth," or "Who by the plough would thrive, himself must either hold or drive,"—there was not anything said in those days about legislating a boy into wealth or comfort or ease, especially at the expense of ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various
... that was not good enough for them. Is it not wiser to remember them as they were, men and women like ourselves, with faults in number, and a half-developed virtue or two, possessing something beyond copybook good or evil, which won our love in life, and will keep their memory green after death? I did not fall into the error of thinking that death had hallowed wishes which I had opposed in life; and while standing by my father's ...
— Dross • Henry Seton Merriman
... Erskine would take the seals. Some of his puns were very poor. For instance, his exclamation, "Cite to me the decisions of the judges of the land: not the judgments of the Chief Justice of Ely, who is fit only to rule a copybook." ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... Homes of England, How eerily they stand, While through them flit their ghosts—to wit, The Monk with the Red Hand, The Eyeless Girl—an awful spook - To stop the boldest breath, The boy that inked his copybook, And so got ...
— Ban and Arriere Ban • Andrew Lang
... talking a lot of copybook platitudes with which you have allowed your mind to stagnate. But you must convince me, for if what you say is true I shall have nothing to do with politics. Let us begin with Senator North. How and when did he buy his seat, and what ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... of this misfortune a stepping-stone to better things rested on no greater security than his pride and yet it would not be wholly conquered. He spent a long morning by the riverside planning schemes so futile that even the boy's mind rejected them. The old copybook maxims recurred to him and were treated with derision. He knew that he would never become Lord Mayor of London—after a prosperous career in a dingy office which he had formerly swept ...
— Aladdin of London - or Lodestar • Sir Max Pemberton
... he has begun, about a knight-errant in search of a father. The King says there are many such about his court; but I never saw them nor heard of them before. The Marchioness de la Motte, his relative, brought it to me, written out in a charming hand, as much as the copybook would hold; and I got through, I know not how far. If he had gone on with the nymphs in the grotto, I never should have been tired of him; but he quite forgot his own story, and left them at once: in a hurry (I suppose) to set out upon his mission to Saintonge in the pays de ...
— English Satires • Various
... when I was a very little boy, I remember being very much impressed by a heading in my copybook which ran: "He who can learn to write, can learn to draw." Now this was putting the cart before the horse, so far as my experience had gone, for I could most certainly draw before I could write, and had not only become an editor long before I was fit to be a contributor, but was also a publisher ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... over on her back, and the stars tingled through the frosty air. The lake lay black beneath on a grey world, plain as a blot of ink on a boy's copybook. ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... a frightful row to-day. Verbenowitsch was collecting the German copybooks and when Sch. wanted to hand up her copybook she said: Please give up your copybook yourself; I won't have anything to do with (then there was a long pause) you. We were all apalled and Sch. went as white as a sheet. At 10 o'clock she begged permission to leave the room because ...
— A Young Girl's Diary • An Anonymous Young Girl
... copybook across the table, and he began to read the page, but with something running in his head that made it no sense. Looking up after a minute or two he found the child's eyes fixed on him and felt in them something strange. Then Morgan ...
— The Pupil • Henry James
... well said. Try and live up to it. You will find it a task, though, to regulate your life by copybook maxims." ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... remember when I was a little boy in school, and one day made a big blot on the very first page of my new copybook, that I didn't have the heart to go on any further, and I recollect well how I teased my father to buy me a new book, and cried and sulked until he finally took his knife and neatly cut out the blotted page. Then I was comforted and took heart, and I believe I finished that copybook so well that ...
— Dr. Heidenhoff's Process • Edward Bellamy
... with a Hixon postmark, and for an instant gazed at it with a puzzled expression. It was addressed in a feminine hand, which he did not recognize. It was careful, but perfect, writing, such as one sees in a school copybook. With an apology he tore the covering, and read the letter. Adrienne, glancing at his face, saw it suddenly pale and grow as ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... out to you?" he inquired suddenly, with a touch of whimsicality. "Or are you resolved to preach copybook moralities at me, such as 'Be good and you ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... can make it quite clear to you. But don't you mind how we smiled at wee Willie for wanting to give his bonny picture-book to Mrs Grey's blind Allie? It was a treasure to him; but to the poor wee blind lassie it was no better than an old copybook would have been. And don't you mind that David prays: 'Open Thou mine eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of Thy law'? That must mean something. I am afraid most of those who read God's Word fail to see ...
— Christie Redfern's Troubles • Margaret Robertson
... body, working together towards a common end. It is a puzzling question how this firm art was secured: since technique does not mean so much a gift from heaven as the taking of forethought, the self-conscious skill of a practitioner. Miss Austen, setting down her thoughts of an evening in a copybook in her lap, interrupted by conversations and at the beck and call of household duties, does not seem as one who was acquiring the mastery of a difficult art-form. But the wind bloweth where it listeth—and the evidences ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton |
