"Rote" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 'Higher Law,' but thinks State Rights the Catechism; Which having learned by rote, he links His practice to ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... Didst hear the fellow's words who handed it? I asked from whom it came, he spoke by rote, "The pepper bites, the corn is ripe for harvest, I come from Eisenach." ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. II. (of II.), Jewish Poems: Translations • Emma Lazarus
... to find whether the accounts that had been given him of my memory had not been exaggerated; and that he might be convinced, he first gave me the names of fifty soldiers to learn by rote, which I did in five minutes. He next repeated the subjects of two letters, which I immediately composed in French and Latin; the one I wrote, the other I dictated. He afterwards ordered me to trace, with promptitude, a landscape from nature, which ...
— The Life and Adventures of Baron Trenck - Vol. 1 (of 2) • Baron Trenck
... to appreciate that mercy, which 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 did wrong, yet religious principle ...
— Domestic pleasures - or, the happy fire-side • F. B. Vaux
... should know. Your doubts lie as light as dust on my belief. I know the philosophies of this time and of other times; if I chose I could answer a summons before their tribunals. I could silence the beliefs which are the mother-tongue of my soul and speak with the rote-learned language of a system, that gives you the spelling of all things, sure of its alphabet covering them all. I could silence them: may not a man silence his awe or his love, and take to finding reasons, which others ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... attack is made ever so slightly on his flank. 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
... in profound sympathy with that revered Antiquity by his fundamental conviction that it is the practice of life which matters. Not he is the great philosopher who knows the tenets of the Stoics or Peripatetics by rote—but he who expresses the meaning of philosophy by his life and his morals, for that is its purpose. He is truly a divine who teaches, not by artful syllogisms, but by his disposition, by his face and his eyes, by his life itself, that wealth should ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... 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 ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... upon inquiry to be unable to read; yet the children of this large parish attend school regularly, and make use of books. They hold the catechism-book in their hands as if they were reading, while they only repeat its contents, which they know by rote." The only exception to this state of things made by Lord Durham was in favour of the Catholic clergy, who were represented by him as a respectable and well-conducted class of men, and well-disposed towards the government. The report further ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... necessary, as well in curing diseases as in preserving of health, and which requires a great insight into the nature of things; nor the true grounds and reasons of compounding, practising their way rather by rote then by rule; with better reason may a Brick-layer or Carpenter pretend to be a Mathematical, or a Common Fidler to be a Musick Reader in the Universities, or Gresham-College, since both these have the practical part of those Sciences, which Apothecaries have not ...
— A Short View of the Frauds and Abuses Committed by Apothecaries • Christopher Merrett
... into it," she said, laughing. "They were written by Carlyle; you will know something of his works some day, I hope. This is what he says: 'Not one in a thousand has the smallest turn for thinking; only for passive dreaming, and hearsaying, and active babbling by rote. Of the eyes that men do glare withal, so few can see.' It sounds rather like a scolding, doesn't it? Well, I don't want you to be like that; I want you both to think and to see, and you will find much happiness to think about and ...
— Hunter's Marjory - A Story for Girls • Margaret Bruce Clarke
... the great neglect and scorn of preaching, ariseth from the practice of men who set up to decry and disparage religion; these, being zealous to promote infidelity and vice, learn a rote of buffoonery that serveth all occasions, and refutes the strongest arguments for piety and good manners. These have a set of ridicule calculated for all sermons, and all preachers, and can be extreme witty as often as they please upon ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift
... April with his shoures sote The droughte of March hath perced to the rote, And bathed every veine in swiche licour, Of which vertue engendred is the flour; Whan Zephirus eke with his sote brethe, Enspired hath in every holt and hethe The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne Hath in ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... assertion by a few examples. Mrs. Piozzi, who often repeated by rote, what she did not understand, ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... To attempt to cultivate such minds for eminent purposes 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 ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... we have almost done living Things grow familiar to men's minds by being often seen To condemn them as impossible, is by a temerarious presumption To contemn what we do not comprehend To go a mile out of their way to hook in a fine word To know by rote, is no knowledge Tongue will grow too stiff to bend Totally brutified by an immoderate thirst after knowledge Unbecoming rudeness to carp at everything Unjust to exact from me what I do not owe Where their profit is, let them there have their pleasure ...
— Widger's Quotations from The Essays of Montaigne • David Widger
... learned by rote a parrot may rehearse, But talking is not always to converse, Not more distinct from harmony divine The constant creaking of a country sign. ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... Horses haue thei none, ne none desire, for that their Chamelles in al niedes serue them as well. Thei haue siluer and golde plentie, and diuerse kindes of spices, whiche other countries haue not. Laton, Brasse, Iron, Purple, Safron, the precious rote costus, and all coruen woorkes, are brought into theim by other. Thei bewrie their kyng in a donghille, for other thei wille skante take so muche laboure. There is no people that better kiepeth their promise and couenaunt, then thei doe, ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries - Vol. II • Richard Hakluyt
... 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 til deth. ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... their writings a great number of high and glorious principles and acts, and our first thought thereupon is, "All this must have had an existence somewhere or other in those times. These very men, indeed, may be merely speaking by rote, and not understand what they say; but it matters not to the profit of their writings what they were themselves." It matters not to the profit of their writings, nor again to the authority resulting from them; for the times ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... bullying, brawling, champion of the Church, Vain as a parrot screaming on her perch; And like that parrot screaming out by rote, The same stale, flat, unprofitable note; Still interrupting all debate With one eternal cry of "Church and State!" With all the High Tory's ignorance increased, By all the arrogance that makes the priest; One ...
— East Anglia - Personal Recollections and Historical Associations • J. Ewing Ritchie
... 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 ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang
... years ago, was compelled to be familiar with the Genevan creed, as expressed in "The Shorter Catechism," but most little Presbyterians regarded that document as a necessary but unintelligible evil—the sorrow that haunted the Sabbath. I knew it by rote, Effectual Calling and all, but did not perceive that it possessed either meaning or actuality. Nobody was so unkind as to interpret the significance of the questions and answers; but somebody did interpret them for Stevenson, or his early genius enabled ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... has indeed improved, but it has become somewhat fastidious. Only that which seems interesting and intelligible to the child impresses itself permanently; on the other hand, useless and unintelligible verses learned by rote, that persons have taught him, though seldom, for fun, are ...
— The Mind of the Child, Part II • W. Preyer
... myself to a greasy monk, who does not—he! he! he!—understand the barbarous Latin he repeats by rote. Such would be a fitting counsellor to one who has studied both in Spain and Arabia! No, Catharine, I will choose a confessor that is pleasant to look upon, and you shall be honoured with the office. Now, look yonder at his valiancie, his eyebrow drops ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... worked forward and upward and although he did not know the alphabet excepting by rote, a common ante-bellum plantation accomplishment, and while professing high contempt for what he called "cold shelf-knowledge," his reputation for wisdom, wisdom as gleaned in observation and experience and "ripened by ...
— Daddy Do-Funny's Wisdom Jingles • Ruth McEnery Stuart
... excelling his companions in all boyish feats, on land and water, he had an unconquerable aversion to the confinement of the school-room. At that day, the school-room was, indeed, a dull and uninviting place, the lessons a tedious routine of learning by rote, and the teacher a tyrant, enforcing them by the terrors of the stick. The boy went to school a little, now and then, but learned little more than to read, write, and cipher, and these imperfectly. The only books he remembers using at school were the spelling-book and Testament. ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton
... reader of Ensign Northerton's remarks, "D—n Homo," etc.;[Sec.] but the reasons for our dislike are not exactly the same. I wish to express, that we become tired of the task before we can comprehend the beauty; that we learn by rote before we can get by heart; that the freshness is worn away, and the future pleasure and advantage deadened and destroyed, by the didactic anticipation, at an age when we can neither feel nor understand the power of compositions which it requires ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... 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 ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... 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 his ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller
... by rote; Thy farewells array the West; Fur that clasped thee round the throat Leaps—a squirrel—to its nest! Backward from a sparkling eye Half-forgotten jests return Where the rabbit lollops by Hurry-scurry through ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... within their mission 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)
... caged, But longing to be loosen'd by Her suitor's faith declared and gaged, When blest with that release desired, First doubts if truly she is free, Then pauses, restlessly retired, Alarm'd at too much liberty; But soon, remembering all her debt To plighted passion, gets by rote Her duty; says, 'I love him!' yet The thought half chokes her in her throat; And, like that fatal 'I am thine,' Comes with alternate gush and check And joltings of the heart, as wine Pour'd from a flask of narrow neck. Is he indeed her choice? She fears Her Yes ...
— The Angel in the House • Coventry Patmore
... 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
... 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 there; When FOLLY, pointing ...
— The First of April - Or, The Triumphs of Folly: A Poem Dedicated to a Celebrated - Duchess. By the author of The Diaboliad. • William Combe
... God, and Jesus Christ whom 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 ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... 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 itself, than ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... I love 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? ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... Scandinavia are strictly so. It is said, to be sure, that the 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. ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... moment, 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 ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit
... 80 in the shade, engaged in disparting 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 sketch of a boy running for ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... made a step forward irresolutely, seemed on the point of speaking, but something in Rainham's eyes coerced her, and Eve was crying. He continued very fast and low, as though he told with difficulty some shameful story, learnt by rote. ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... traditional curriculum, the learning by rote of the classics without explanation in early youth, followed by a more intelligent study in later years. This is exactly like the traditional study of the classics in this country, as it existed, for example, in the eighteenth century. Men over thirty, even if, in the end, they have secured ...
— The Problem of China • Bertrand Russell
... itself on being an age of 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 there may be a ...
— Autobiography of Frank G. Allen, Minister of the Gospel - and Selections from his Writings • Frank G. Allen
... I "heard 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 believed you for ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... art instead of nature, something by rote instead of a segment of inner harmony, she could not have succeeded so well. He warded off the few blunders, and at the third change she had another well-bred partner. But she was glad to get back to him. The joy ...
— A Little Girl in Old Salem • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... my brothers, Jacob and Ezra, four hundred dollars each," continued Hiram, in his same voice of repeating by rote, "and to my sister Prudence, five thousand dollars—so fixed that ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... village had looked pityingly at her, and the judge had put his questions kindly; but for all that, she was no match for the bright intellects of the law. Lawyers are great men to simple folk; they can quote paragraph this and section that; they have learned such things by rote, ready to bring out at any moment. Oh, they are great men indeed. And apart from all this knowledge, they are not always devoid of sense; sometimes even not altogether heartless. Inger had no cause to complain of the court; she made no mention of the hare, ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun
... dockyards in the making of metal ships. The man who doubted, let us say, our fabulous ancient kings running up to Adam, or found but mythology in some old tale, was as hated as if he had doubted the authority of Scripture. Above all no man was so ignorant, that he had not by rote familiar arguments and statistics to drive away amid familiar applause, all those had they but found strange truth in the world or in their mind, whose knowledge has passed out of memory and become an instinct of hand or eye. There was no literature, for literature ...
— Synge And The Ireland Of His Time • William Butler Yeats
... will know as much as many who have been two years at the work. I have always said that it is a mistake to teach children young; their minds do not take in what you say to them. You may beat it into them, but they only get it by rote; and painfully, because they don't understand how one thing leads to another, and it is their memory only, and not their minds, that ...
— Both Sides the Border - A Tale of Hotspur and Glendower • G. A. Henty
... repeated by rote, as she had learned from her mother, the ill-omened words, hardly knowing their meaning, beyond that they were something very potent, and very wicked, which had been handed down through generations of poisoners and witches from the times ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... Cartier Islands the landing of illegal immigrants from Indonesia's Rote Island has ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... 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
... origin this for such a society, and the fruits will be without flavor. Art will not submit to be so lowered," will say some travelled dilettante, who, with book in hand, has looked by rote on the wonders of the Louvre and the Vatican; but the Creator of the universe teaches a different lesson from this observer. Not the rare lightning merely, but the daily sunlight, too; not merely the distant star-studded canopy of the earth, but also our near earth itself, has He made beautiful. ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... called, are stages on the road to truth. It does not follow that a man will travel any further; but if he has really considered the world and drawn a conclusion, he has travelled as far. This does not apply to formulae got by rote, which are stages on the road to nowhere but second childhood and the grave. To have a catchword in your mouth is not the same thing as to hold an opinion; still less is it the same thing as to have ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... In the very middle of the fifth proposition, when Miss Rowe had changed the letters on the blackboard, and was endeavouring to make Vera Clifford grasp the principle of the reasoning, instead of merely repeating the problem by rote, Enid's head was bent low over her desk, and her fingers appeared to be busy ...
— The Nicest Girl in the School - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... passion of an angry grief: Forgive 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 Save on some worn-out plan, Repeating as 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, How ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... Take rote of parsel. pasternak of rasenns [2]. scrape hem waisthe hem clene. take rapes & caboches ypared and icorne [3]. take an erthen panne with clene water & set it on the fire. cast all ise erinne. whan ey buth boiled cast erto peeres & parboile hem wel. take ...
— The Forme of Cury • Samuel Pegge
... 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 ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various
... 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 ...
— English Satires • Various
... the Negro to work by rule and rote but not by principle and method. It did not and, perhaps, could not teach him to love and respect labor, but left him, on the contrary, with the idea that manual industry was a thing to be despised and gotten rid of, if possible; that to work with one's hands was a badge of inferiority. A tropical ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... saw the flapping crow, whose frequent note Voiced the monotony of land and sky, Mocking with graceless wing and rusty coat His priestly presence as he trotted by. He would have cursed the bird by bell and rote, But other game just then was in his eye,— A savage camp, whose occupants preferred Their heathen darkness to the ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... mind and sperit loved to grope around more and find out things to praise and blame by rote and not by note, and Dorothy and ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley
... point of contrast between the must and no must, the compulsion and no compulsion. In fact, the whole of it is usually mouthed out, without much reference to Shylock or the play, as if it had been learned by rote from a school speech-book. Hazlitt says, in his Characters of Shakspeare's Plays, 'The speech about mercy is very well, but there are a thousand finer ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 75, April 5, 1851 • Various
... The word occurs in S. Foote's farrago of nonsense, which he wrote to test the memory of old Macklin, who said in a lecture "he had brought his own memory to such perfection that he could learn anything by rote on once hearing it." ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... the humanities were generally 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 he understood, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 6 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 2 (of 2) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... prosperous, will never so far forsake the traditions of his tribe as to stay long in any one place. His mind is not as ours. A little of our civilisation we can teach him, and he will learn it, as he may learn to repeat by rote the signs of the zodiac or the multiplication table, or to use a table napkin, or to decorously dispose of the stones in a cherry tart. But the lesson sits lightly on him, and he remains in heart as irreclaimable as ever. Already, ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... of," she picked up the lines which she already knew by rote; and then, "Miss Dryad Anderson's company," in the heavy sprawling scrawl which she knew must have come from ...
— Once to Every Man • Larry Evans
... 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, or ...
— The Bad Boy At Home - And His Experiences In Trying To Become An Editor - 1885 • Walter T. Gray
... in Mr. Allen's teaching was too much attention to English grammar. The order ought to be, literature first, and grammar afterward. Perhaps there is no more tiresome trifling in the world for boys and girls than rote recitations and parsing from one of the usual ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... realize the dialectical incompetence of the uneducated is partly to be explained by the fact that they often get bits of reasoning by rote, much as young boys learn their Euclid; and that they frequently seem to understand principles because they apply them in the right cases, just as we often quote a proverb appropriately without the slightest idea of its origin or meaning beyond that it is the right thing to say in a certain connection. ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... I hate my stool; What am I but a nerveless tool? But we did not work by rote or rule When I counted socks ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. CLVIII, January 7, 1920 • Various
... a understanding from the main club for we have lots of people in Tex. want to no direct about it and want to go. We take your paper in this citey and your paper was all we had to go by so we are depending on you for farther advise. Dear editor you muss excuse our bad letter for we rote it in ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 4, 1919 • Various
... of the district. He made good proficiency, but nothing worthy of note occurred in relation to his studies till he was about fifteen years of age. He then began to think, as he says. Before that time, he had repeated by rote whatever he had been taught. The first impulse to reflection was a new discovery. He had been taught from childhood that accent is a stress of voice laid on some syllable or letter of a word. But this definition had ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... that sequence of second prizes must have filled him with chagrin, but to be beaten thus repeatedly by such a fellow as Bruno Chilvers was humiliation intolerable. A fopling, a mincer of effeminate English, a rote-repeater of academic catchwords—bah! The by-examinations of the year had whispered presage, but Peak always felt that he was not putting forth his strength; when the serious trial came he would show what was really in him. Too late he recognised ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... would be a book of artfully turned phrases; a book in which all the characters, especially women, would think and speak and act by rote and rule—as according to Mr. Peter Vibart; it would be a scholarly book, of elaborate finish and care of detail, with no irregularities of style or anything else to break the monotonous harmony of the whole—indeed, sir, it would ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... which I heard repeated identically again and again, as if it were learned by rote: "The Germans had peacefully entered the land; boiling hot water was showered on them from upper stories; they were shot at from houses and hedges; many soldiers had thus been killed; the wells had been poisoned. Such acts of treachery had necessarily ...
— In the Claws of the German Eagle • Albert Rhys Williams
... anxieties in which she had no share. Her paroxysms of exhilaration, followed by a 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 ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... rehearse this 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
... 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 here distinguished by the name of gallantry: ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... be studied, known, and well attended to; or we only follow the art blindly, and without certainty. Thence the common indifference of so many performers, who mind nothing more than a rote of the art, without tracing it to ...
— A Treatise on the Art of Dancing • Giovanni-Andrea Gallini
... 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
... rug reck rate reed rill rub rig rim rite ride rise red rag rick rote run reek rib rob rip ruse roar roam rack rid rip rouse Arch farm lark far snare for march harm bark bar spare war larch charm mark hair sure corn starch dark are stair lure born arm ...
— McGuffey's Fourth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... 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 trouble himself that Ruy Sandoval ...
— The Flute of the Gods • Marah Ellis Ryan
... deepest distress[687]. For on the 17th of March, O.S., his wife died. Why Sir John Hawkins should unwarrantably take upon him even to suppose that Johnson's fondness for her was dissembled (meaning simulated or assumed,) and to assert, that if it was not the case, 'it was a lesson he had learned by rote[688],' I cannot conceive; unless it proceeded from a want of similar feelings in his own breast. To argue from her being much older than Johnson, or any other circumstances, that he could not really love her, is absurd; for love is not a subject of reasoning, but of feeling, and therefore ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... names that signifie nothing; but are taken up, and learned by rote from the Schooles, as Hypostatical, Transubstantiate, Consubstantiate, Eternal-now, and the like ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes
... 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 ...
— The Lion and The Mouse - A Story Of American Life • Charles Klein
... 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. Men fall into a routine when they are tired ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... undir the assches there offe, the coles wil duellen and abyden alle quyk, a zere or more. And that tre hathe many leves, as the gynypre hathe. And there ben also many trees, that of nature thei wole never brenne ne rote in no manere. And there ben note trees, that beren notes, als grete as a mannes hed. There also ben many bestes, that ben clept orafles. [Footnote: Giraffes.] In Arabye, thei ben clept gerfauntz; that is a best pomelee or apotted; ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, Volume 9 - Asia, Part 2 • Richard Hakluyt
... will take the upper hand in the confusion will arrange life wisely, after their own fashion. Then things won't go at random, but as if by rote. It's a pity that we shall not ...
— Foma Gordyeff - (The Man Who Was Afraid) • Maxim Gorky
... "It is Faustus who calls there. No one else has the power; and no one else, if he had such power, would dare to knock so loudly against the iron portals. Up! up! a man like him is worth a thousand of the scoundrels who come down hither every day by rote." Then, turning to the devil Leviathan, his favourite, he added, "I choose thee, the subtlest seducer, the deadliest hater of the human race, to ascend and purchase for me, by thy dangerous services, the soul of this desperado. ...
— Faustus - his Life, Death, and Doom • Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger
... let you, spite of all endeavor, Mar some nocturne by a single note; Is there immortality of discord In your failure to preserve the rote? ...
— Behind the Arras - A Book of the Unseen • Bliss Carman
... such tune as he chose, and 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 ...
— The Two Hundredth Anniversary of the Settlement of the Town of New Milford, Conn. June 17th, 1907 • Daniel Davenport
... 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 to mastery of ...
— Violin Mastery - Talks with Master Violinists and Teachers • Frederick H. Martens
... examples should be too remote, A modern magistrate of famous note, Shall give you his own history by rote; I'll make it out, deny it he that can, His worship is a true-born Englishman; By all the latitude that empty word, By modern acceptation's understood: The parish books his great descent record, And now he hopes ere long to be a lord; ...
— The True-Born Englishman - A Satire • Daniel Defoe
... round you and he sez, I received the kit you sent me and It is a great comfort (the kit is not a cat but a assortment of handkerchiefs and tooth brushes and everything a soldier gets and Mother sent him his and so he rote to thank her) an he sez if I go over the top with the best of luck and get enuf leave to come home I will give Myself the pleasure of calling on you, and showin you what a Greenville soldier looks like. My reciprocity shall never ...
— Deer Godchild • Marguerite Bernard and Edith Serrell
... 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.[214] We are like children who repeat by rote the sentences of grandames and tutors, and, as they grow older, of the men and talents and characters they chance to see,—painfully recollecting the exact words they spoke; afterwards, when they come into the point of view which those had who uttered those saying, they understand them, and ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... it, but I am afraid I shall never do it by rote. I have the best will in the world about it, but my genius doesn't lie in that direction. As a loafer I shall never be original, as I ...
— The American • Henry James
... tone! I could scarcely interpret it. Was he talking by rote, or was he utterly done with life and all its interests? No one besides myself seemed to note this strange passivity. To the masses he was no longer a suffering man, but an individual from whom information was to be got. The next question was a ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... as he 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
... 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
... to his mayoralty, and the so-called "king's party" was again in the ascendant, Philipot again appears as alderman of his old ward, continuing in office until his death (12 Sept., 1384), when he was succeeded by John Rote.—Letter Book H, fos. ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume I • Reginald R. Sharpe |
