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Literature   Listen
noun
Literature  n.  
1.
Learning; acquaintance with letters or books.
2.
The collective body of literary productions, embracing the entire results of knowledge and fancy preserved in writing; also, the whole body of literary productions or writings upon a given subject, or in reference to a particular science or branch of knowledge, or of a given country or period; as, the literature of Biblical criticism; the literature of chemistry.
3.
The class of writings distinguished for beauty of style or expression, as poetry, essays, or history, in distinction from scientific treatises and works which contain positive knowledge; belles-lettres.
4.
The occupation, profession, or business of doing literary work.
Synonyms: Science; learning; erudition; belles-lettres. See Science. Literature, Learning, Erudition. Literature, in its widest sense, embraces all compositions in writing or print which preserve the results of observation, thought, or fancy; but those upon the positive sciences (mathematics, etc.) are usually excluded. It is often confined, however, to belles-lettres, or works of taste and sentiment, as poetry, eloquence, history, etc., excluding abstract discussions and mere erudition. A man of literature (in this narrowest sense) is one who is versed in belles-lettres; a man of learning excels in what is taught in the schools, and has a wide extent of knowledge, especially, in respect to the past; a man of erudition is one who is skilled in the more recondite branches of learned inquiry. "The origin of all positive science and philosophy, as well as of all literature and art, in the forms in which they exist in civilized Europe, must be traced to the Greeks." "Learning thy talent is, but mine is sense." "Some gentlemen, abounding in their university erudition, fill their sermons with philosophical terms."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Literature" Quotes from Famous Books



... my admiration of Chaucer's genius, and so profound my reverence for him as an instrument in the hands of Providence, for spreading the light of literature through his native land, that notwithstanding the defects and faults in this publication" (referring, I presume, to the volume, 'The Poems of Geoffrey Chaucer Modernised'), "I am glad of it, as a means of making many acquainted with the original, who would otherwise be ignorant of everything ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth

... have often meanly shrunk from confessing to these accomplished and acute gentlemen what my own experience has been. I am afraid I have often smiled with hypocritical assent, and gratified them with an epigram on the fleeting nature of our illusions, which any one moderately acquainted with French literature can command at a moment's notice. Human converse, I think some wise man has remarked, is not rigidly sincere. But I herewith discharge my conscience, and declare that I have had quite enthusiastic movements of admiration towards old gentlemen who spoke the worst English, ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot

... of what were once newspapers each on a small half- sheet, yellow and time-stained, of a coarse fabric, and imprinted with a rude old type. Their aspect conveys a singular impression of antiquity, in a species of literature which we are accustomed to consider as connected only with the present moment. Ephemeral as they were intended and supposed to be, they have long outlived the printer and his whole subscription-list, and have proved ...
— Old News - (From: "The Snow Image and Other Twice-Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... shows them to be equally foreign to present day ideas as to the desirable characteristics for children's literature. Yet the crooked black type and crude illustrations of the wholly religious episodes related in the oldest volumes on the shelf, the didactic and moral stories with their tiny type-metal, wood, and copper-plate pictures of the next groups; and the "improving" American tales adorned with ...
— Forgotten Books of the American Nursery - A History of the Development of the American Story-Book • Rosalie V. Halsey

... cannot obtain this desired reassurance through literature, nor yet through glimpses of earth and sky. It can come to him only through the chance embodiment of joy and youth which life itself may throw in his way. It is doubtless true that for the mass of men the message is never so unchallenged and so invincible ...
— The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets • Jane Addams

... too, reflected Mrs. Pantin's taste. A framed motto extolling the virtues of friendship hung over the mantel and the "Blind Girl of Pompeii" groped her way down the staircase on the neutral-tinted wall. A bookcase filled with sets of the world's best literature occupied a corner of the room, while ooze leather copies of Henry Van Dyke gave an unmistakable look of culture to the mission table in the center of the room. A handsome leather davenport with a neat row of sofa pillows along the back, which were of Mrs. Pantin's ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart

... different from either the Latin or the Italian was spoken in Italy from the time of the irruptions of the barbarians to the successful labours of Dante and Petrarca; that this jargon was usually called the vulgar idiom; but that Speroni,[BB] the father of an Italian literature, and others, frequently call it the common Italian Romance. And if Fontanini's[BC] authorities be sufficient, it appears that even the Gallic Romance, by the residence of the papal court at Avignon, and from other ...
— Account of the Romansh Language - In a Letter to Sir John Pringle, Bart. P. R. S. • Joseph Planta, Esq. F. R. S.

... generation; hence in order to detect them in their inception it becomes necessary to push our analysis far back into the past. Large materials for such an historical enquiry are provided for us in the literature of ancient nations which, though often sadly mutilated and imperfect, has survived to modern times and throws much precious light on the religious beliefs and practices of the peoples who created it. But the ancients themselves inherited a great part of their religion ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer

... with the tributary States, such as Corea, Tonking, Cochin China, and Thibet, the author devotes several chapters to the population and natural history of China, whilst he reviews the government, religion, manners, literature, science, and art of ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part 2. The Great Navigators of the Eighteenth Century • Jules Verne

... great Lessing being illustrated in travel: "Wer viel weisst hat viel zu sorgen—" "Who knows much has much to look after." The mere lover of the picturesque, who cares nothing for French history, literature, and institutions, old or new, will get a superb landscape ...
— Holidays in Eastern France • Matilda Betham-Edwards

... to which they belong, are indebted to his animated exertions, his varied talents, his admirable resources of temper, during a period of twenty years, and at a time when the character of American literature, both at home and abroad was yet to be formed. The first great service which the literary taste of this country received, was rendered by Dennie; a remarkable man; qualified by nature and attainments to be a leader in new circumstances; ...
— Poems • George P. Morris

... to bring into English a series of the really significant figures in contemporary European literature.... An undertaking as creditable and as ambitious as any of its kind on the other side of the Atlantic."—New York ...
— The New Society • Walther Rathenau

... him it was now in his power to return that favour; for his extraordinary goodness, as well as that fund of literature he was master of,[A] which he did not expect to find under such a roof, had raised in him more curiosity than he had ever known. "Therefore," said he, "if it be not too troublesome, sir, your ...
— Joseph Andrews, Vol. 2 • Henry Fielding

... unimaginative, prematurely cynical, remaining critical and unmoved in the most impressive scenes, inclined to dissect all my favourite poems, and especially contemptous towards the German lyrics which were my pet literature at that time. To this moment I am unable to define my feeling towards her: it was not ordinary boyish admiration, for she was the very opposite, even to the colour of her hair, of the ideal woman who still remained to me the type of loveliness; and she was without that enthusiasm for the great ...
— The Lifted Veil • George Eliot

... proficiency, that he went through a course of instruction with a local teacher of music, who, scenting talent, dismissed preliminaries with the assurance of his kind, and initiated his pupil into all that is false and meretricious in the literature of the piano—the cheaply pathetic, the tinsel of transcription, the titillating melancholy of Slavonic dance-music—to leave him, but for an increased agility of finger, not a whit further forward than ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson

... younger generation at least, the level of knowledge is quite as high as in England. Indeed, one of the most alarming features of Irish disloyalty is its close and evident connection with education. It is sustained by a cheap literature, written often with no mean literary skill, which penetrates into every village, gives the people their first political impressions, forms and directs their enthusiasm, and seems likely in the long leisure of the pastoral life to exercise ...
— Handbook of Home Rule (1887) • W. E. Gladstone et al.

... of superior shrewdness, and well acquainted with literature and rural affairs, Laidlaw was especially devoted to speculations in science. He was an amateur physician, a student of botany and entomology, and a considerable geologist. He prepared a statistical account of Innerleithen, wrote a geological ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... less persuaded that you will agree with me in opinion that there is nothing which can better deserve your patronage than the promotion of science and literature. Knowledge is in every country the surest basis of public happiness. In one in which the measures of government receive their impressions so immediately from the sense of the community as in ours it is ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... most charming examples of reminiscent literature that has recently seen the light."—New ...
— My Autobiography - A Fragment • F. Max Mueller

... I have given and am about to give, do not, however, by any means support M. Pauthier's view. Nor would that view be consistent with the judgment of so competent an authority as Paulin Paris, implied in his calling Rustician a nom recommandable in old French literature, and his speaking of him as "versed in the secrets of the French Romance Tongue."[13] In fact the difference of language in the two cases would really be a difficulty in the way of identification, if there ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa

... into flames in 1914, we believed that the last war had been already fought. The most vivid endorsement of this belief came out of Germany in a book which, to my mind, up to that time was the strongest peace-argument in modern literature. It was so strong that the Kaiser's Government had the author arrested and every copy that could be found destroyed. Nevertheless, over a million were secretly printed and circulated in Germany, ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson

... wife. She tried to divert her mind by reading, profiting by the liberty of married women to read what they please. She read the novels of Walter Scott, the poems of Lord Byron, the works of Schiller and of Goethe, and much else of modern and also ancient literature. She learned to ride a horse, and to dance and to draw. She painted water-colors and made sepia sketches, turning ardently to all those resources which women employ to bear the weariness of their solitude. She gave herself that ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac

... left, like the Hebrew. There is but little learning among them, which may be owing to the scarcity of books, which are all in manuscript, and therefore few and dear; but they are a people of good capacity, and were they to cultivate literature among them, would assuredly produce many excellent works. They have heard of Aristotle, whom they name Aplis, and have some of his writings translated into Arabic. The noble physician, Avicenna, was a native of Samarcandia, the country of ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr

... being her natural attendant during her wanderings through the wilderness. A distinguished American orator has suggested that a series of novels might be written founded upon the true stories of the border-women of our country. Such a contribution to our literature has thus far been made only to a limited extent. The reason for this deficiency will be obvious on a moment's reflection. The true stories of the pioneer wives and mothers are often as interesting as any work of fiction, ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler

... question. But if they are men with noble powers and qualities, let me tell you, that, next to youthful love and family affections, there is no human sentiment better than that which unites the Societies of Mutual Admiration. And what would literature or art be without such associations? Who can tell what we owe to the Mutual Admiration Society of which Shakspeare, and Ben Jonson, and Beaumont and Fletcher were members? Or to that of which Addison and Steele formed the centre, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes

... subjects for prominence in literature, the arts, and the sciences, his Majesty established an order of chivalry. The official document creating this ...
— Real Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis

... messenger and a kind of secretary in a revolutionary association for young men. He had taught himself to read and sat with other young men studying anarchistic literature. The others took care of him like brothers; but it was a marvel that he had not gone to the dogs. He was nothing but skin and bone, and resembled a fanatic that is almost consumed by his own fire. His ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo

... literature has to be sent to Battalion Headquarters by one A.M., either by orderly or telephone. There it is collated and condensed, and forwarded to the Brigade, which submits it to the same process and sends ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay

... at that time to annex Naples to the holy see. He had amassed a large treasure, but he liked best to spend it in splendid architecture, in noble fountains, in magnificent collections of art, science, and literature, and, above all, in building up fortunes for the children of his sister the washerwoman, and in allying them all to the most princely houses of Italy, while never allowing them even to mention the ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... Mr. Brooke, "if you can write as well as this, you ought to have a career before you. Why," he added, surveying her, "I had no idea of this. And I always did have a secret wish that a child of mine should take to literature. My dear——" ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant

... for the sake of mere common-sense, to get back to something like a real standard of excellence. It is time to say plainly that our literature is in danger of degradation, and that the mass of ...
— My Contemporaries In Fiction • David Christie Murray

... Hanseatic and Flemish immigrants had established an almost unbearable competition in our own ports and towns. But the active import trade, which already connected England with both nearer and remoter parts of Christendom, must have been largely in native hands; and English chivalry, diplomacy, and literature followed in the lines of the trade-routes to the Baltic and the Mediterranean. Our mariners, like their type the "Shipman" in Chaucer (an anticipation of the "Venturer" of later days, with the pirate as yet, perhaps, more strongly marked ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward

... Latin Pompeii Ancient Rome The Roman Forum The Roman House Roman Slaves Roman Children Education among the Romans Some Common Professions and Trades among the Romans Roman Doctors The Roman Soldier Caesar Cicero Vergil Horace Roman Literature Some Famous Women of Ancient Rome Roman Holidays Funeral Customs and Burial Places Roman Games Some Famous Buildings of Ancient Rome Some Famous Roman Letters Some Ancient Romans of Fame A Roman Banquet Roman Roads Some Roman Gods Some Famous Temples ...
— A Handbook for Latin Clubs • Various

... Democratic League, are so replete with the evidence by which their positions are fortified, and so comprehensive in the scope and magnitude of subjects of which they treat, that they must take a high position in the political literature of the day. The manifold opinions of the press demonstrate how highly they are appreciated. They are now being reproduced in THE IRON PLATFORM, published by Wm. Oland Bourne, 112 William street, New York, and intended for extensive circulation ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... and human life. The stars, the daisies, sunsets, rippling waters, love and sorrow, and all the infinite chords that vibrate in the human soul—she would weave them all with warp of gold. Oh, the world would see what was in her soul! She would be the bright particular star of Canadian literature; and then wealth would flow in, too, and she would fix up the old home. Dear old "daddy" should retire and have everything he wanted: and Aunt Prudence, on sweeping days, wouldn't mind moving "the trash," as she called her manuscripts. Daddy wouldn't make ...
— Beth Woodburn • Maud Petitt

... unusual for the subscription book market to see such a princely book come into its midst. Here we have ten dollars worth of new ideas, packed into cream form, all for one dollar, and we positively assert that nothing like it can be found anywhere in literature. Great ...
— Life in a Thousand Worlds • William Shuler Harris

... however, which is raised in this connexion, is one different from any thus far intimated. It is, perhaps, the last question one would have expected the literature of the social movement to raise. It is, namely, the question of the individual. Ever since the middle of the eighteenth century a sort of universalistic optimism, to which the individual is sacrificed, has obtained. Within the period of which this book treats the world has won an enlargement ...
— Edward Caldwell Moore - Outline of the History of Christian Thought Since Kant • Edward Moore

... as she spoke the last two words, and it was possibly this that caused Mr Pickering to visualize Percy as a sort of little Lord Fauntleroy, his favourite character in English literature. He had a vision of a small, delicate, wistful child pining away for his absent sister. Consumptive probably. Or curvature ...
— Uneasy Money • P.G. Wodehouse

... promotion in the army was hopeless, now that Don John was dead and he had no one to press his claims and services, and for a man drawing on to forty life in the ranks was a dismal prospect; he had already a certain reputation as a poet; he made up his mind, therefore, to cast his lot with literature, and for a first venture committed his "Galatea" to the press. It was published, as Salva y Mallen shows conclusively, at Alcala, his own birth-place, in 1585 and no doubt helped to make his name more widely known, but certainly did not do him much ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... there was not the same difficulty, he said, with masses of men. We might disagree about the characters of Julius or Tiberius Caesar, but we could know well enough the Romans of the Empire. We had their literature to tell us how they thought; we had their laws to tell us how they governed; we had the broad face of the world, the huge mountainous outline of their general doings upon it, to tell us how they acted. He believed it was all reducible to laws, and could ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude

... is quite unusual, almost improper, for people in our position to take any interest in literature. Ask Evgenie Pavlovitch if I am not right. It is much more fashionable to drive a ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... even the highest classes of society was not of a flattering character. Europe was one huge camp and battle-field, in which all the chivalry of the day had been educated,—no good school for purity of life and delicacy of language. The literature of the time, at least that portion of it which penetrated to ladies' chambers, was of an amorous, and too frequently of an indelicate character. A debased and sensual clergy swarmed over the land, finding their way into every household, and gradually corrupting those with whom their sacred office ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866 • Various

... had influenced ministers in their grant of pensions to literary and scientific men, as had been asserted by Mr. Grote, and expressed his belief that were any government disposed so to prostitute its power, there was a spirit in literature and science which would save talent from the disgrace of such political profligacy. Mr. Grote's motion was further opposed by Mr. Charles Buller, albeit he was his friend. He differed from him both as to tire policy of granting pensions at all, and in respect to the quarter ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... characteristics of this age in the extraordinary progress which it has witnessed in popular knowledge. A new and powerful impulse has been acting in the social system of late, producing this effect in a most remarkable degree. In morals, in politics, in art, in literature, there is a vast accession to the number of readers and to the number of proficients. The present state of popular knowledge is not the result of a slow and uniform progress, proceeding through a lapse ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster

... School at S——, at the age when boys usually go to their Harrow and Winchester, as well equipped, I daresay, as most boys of my years; for with the rudiments I had been fairly diligent, and with some of them even had become expert. I was well grounded in Latin and French grammar, and in English literature was far ahead of boys much older than myself. Looking back now upon the drilling I had at S——, I consider it was well done; but I have to set against the benefits I got from the system the fact that I had ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett

... ill deed; 50-54. Lamon prefers to say that most of this literature is "too indecent for ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse

... The literary suggestion implied by being "on a newspaper" was more than he had hoped for. If you have sold newspapers, and slept in a barrel or behind a pile of lumber in a wood-yard, to report a fire in a street- car shed seems a flight of literature. He applied himself to the careful study of newspapers—their points of view, their style of phrasing. He believed them to be perfect. To attain ease in expressing himself in their elevated language he felt to be the summit of lofty ambition. ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... of my dear child were unceasing, and from the hour when she could read, it may truly be stated that she learned to write; her contributions to the current literature of the day, her valuable works upon religious subjects, and others of a lighter character, most of which have been reprinted in other lands, all testify to a mind of no common stamp; and here, in reply to numerous questions relative to her literary remains, I may ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume I. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes. • Grace Aguilar

... no maudlin nonsense as to the affections. There are no counts in disguise nor castles in Spain. It is pure and wholesome literature of a high order with a ...
— Now or Never - The Adventures of Bobby Bright • Oliver Optic

... can reconcile the purchase thereof with their consciences, answer to their fellow men for the inevitable consequences. But it must be confessed that there is in this department a sad want. All readers of moderate discrimination must have felt it painfully. In the literature of fiction we need organization. How do we know a good tea from a bad? Is it by the universal consent of the good people of China—by a democratic 'censeatur' of the celestial nation? Not at all. Every variety is tasted by men who rinse their mouths after each swallow, and the comparative ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... when his great-aunt died and made him her heir: "as a poor reward for his immortal services to literature," read the will of this phenomenally appreciative relative. The estate was a large one. There was a rush for his books; new editions were announced. He smiled with cynicism, not unmixed with sadness; but he was very grateful for the money, and as soon as his fastidious taste would permit ...
— The Bell in the Fog and Other Stories • Gertrude Atherton

... Literature, outside of the masters, has given us but one idea of the mistress, the subtle, calculating siren who delights to prey on the souls of men. The journalism and the moral pamphleteering of the time seem to foster it with almost partisan zeal. It would seem that a censorship ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser

... beauty and happiness and contentment. I want you to go with me to see and know the natural wonders of the world, and the wonders that men have wrought. I want to surround you with the beauties of art and literature, with everything that your heart craves. I want you to know the people whose friendship would be a delight to you. Come with me, girl—be my wife, and together we will find—if not paradise, at least a full and ...
— When A Man's A Man • Harold Bell Wright

... that if the Pilgrim's Progress did not exist the Holy War would be the best allegory that ever was written: and even Mr. Froude admits that the Holy War alone would have entitled its author to rank high up among the acknowledged masters of English literature. The intellectual rank of the Holy War has been fixed before that tribunal over which our accomplished and competent critics preside; but for a full appreciation of its religious rank and value we would need to hear the glad testimonies of tens of thousands of God's saints, whose hard-beset ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte

... the original basis of the whole rich and fantastic legend. One point, which to me is strongly in favor of the antiquity of this poetic cycle, is, that the manners are so clearly anterior to chivalry, and to the influence exercised on the poetic literature of Europe by the chivalrous poems and romances. I think I find some traces of that influence in the Latin poem, though strained through the imagination of a monk. The English reader will find an amusing account of the German Nibelungen ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon

... Post; that will be a repetition of Mrs. Lefevre's, only the rooms will be dressed with flowers; but we can see flowers any day in a greenhouse and by daylight, and without the necessity of waltzing up to them.Bampton Foulard. Ah, that is a variety! Science and Literature trying to play puss in the corner, while Fashion sweeps over the floor and catches their feet in her train. I know Mrs. Bampton's receptions; they are such a thorough "Durcheinander" that if you by chance see anything there you want, you can't get it; nor get at it.Southgate; the ...
— The Gold of Chickaree • Susan Warner

... in his place to teach the Greek language and its literature; sometimes were added classes in Latin. This was the easier problem. The more difficult problem grew out of the demand, that he should live intimately in a world of much littleness and not himself become little; ...
— The Mettle of the Pasture • James Lane Allen

... rational entertainment for a vacent hour, earnestly recommend it to the attention and support of their fellow citizens. The utility of a public circulating library is too obvious to need arguments to demonstrate it. The friends of Literature, of Virtue, and refinement of manners, will, no doubt duly appreciate its value, and interest themselves ...
— Seaport in Virginia - George Washington's Alexandria • Gay Montague Moore

... it may not be wholly without interest to some into whose hands it may fall, I now submit this slight contribution to the political literature ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson

... the employment office of a typewriter company, and answering want advertisements, the typewriter people sent her to the office of the Motor and Gas Gazette, a weekly magazine for the trade. In this atmosphere of the literature of lubricating oil and drop forgings and body enamels, as an eight-dollar-a-week copyist, Una first beheld the drama and romance of the ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis

... establishment of the School of Alexandria, and those of that school itself, are completely lost, except some quotations and passages preserved in the later writers; so that the writings of Hippocrates remain alone amongst the ruins of ancient medical literature." Sydenham said of Hippocrates: "He it is whom we can never duly praise," and refers to him as "that divine old man," and "the Romulus of medicine, whose heaven was the empyrean of ...
— Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine • James Sands Elliott

... or passionate feeling. Gray, it is true, though unjustly condemned as artificial and meretricious in his style, had infused into the scanty works which he has bequeathed to immortality a pathos and a richness foreign to the literature of the age; and, subsequently, Goldsmith, in the affecting yet somewhat enervate simplicity of his verse, had obtained for Poetry a brief respite from a school at once declamatory and powerless, and led her forth for a "Sunshine Holiday" into ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... doubt not that Providence has kept for us the best of this Hebrew literature. To say that it is the best literature that the world has produced is to say very little. It is separated widely from all other sacred writings. Its constructive ideas are as far above those of the other books of religion as the heavens are above the ...
— Who Wrote the Bible? • Washington Gladden

... The history of literature abounds in stories of under-the-surface work. The man of genius usually waits until the mood is on, until the muse speaks; then all his lifeless material is lighted by new radiance. He feels that some one outside himself is dictating. Often he merely holds the pen while the ...
— Outwitting Our Nerves - A Primer of Psychotherapy • Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury

... any specific meaning, questioning whether they were not merely vague symbols of esoteric religious import and nothing more. And it was the Rosetta Stone that gave the answer to these doubters, and restored to the world a lost language and a forgotten literature. ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 12 (of 12) • S. Rappoport

... is sufficiently acquainted with the ancient literature of civilized peoples, and with the legends of those which are rude and savage; any one who has reflected on the spontaneous value of words and conceptions in modern speech, must often have observed how myth assumed the form of a logical ...
— Myth and Science - An Essay • Tito Vignoli

... in Australasian literature, and drew out a great deal more information from Harry than Norman had yet heard. She made him talk about the Maori pah near his uncle's farm, where the Sunday services were conducted by an old gentleman tattooed elegantly in the face, but dressed like an English clergyman; ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge

... inhabitants of Latium, that they descended from generation to generation, and in subsequent years exercised great influence, in modeling the religious faith and worship of the Roman people. They thus continued to be practiced for many ages, and, through the literature of the Romans, became subsequently known and celebrated throughout the whole ...
— Romulus, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... all by its bulk, its strength, or even its utility. In like manner, in the development of the social organism, as the life of nations becomes more complex, Thought assumes a more imperial character; and Literature, in its widest sense, becomes a delicate index of social evolution. Barbarous societies show only the germs of literary life. But advancing civilisation, bringing with it increased conquest over material agencies, ...
— The Principles of Success in Literature • George Henry Lewes

... is to be earnestly hoped that 40,000 male prisoners will not be returned, as a matter of right, without any guarantee for their future conduct. It is also much to be desired that the bastard taal language, which has no literature and is almost as unintelligible to a Hollander as to an Englishman, will cease to be officially recognised. These two omissions may repay in the long run for weary months of extra war since, upon ...
— The War in South Africa - Its Cause and Conduct • Arthur Conan Doyle

... prolific writer of songs, prologues, epilogues, masques, and the lighter dramatic fare. Much of this work is not lacking in wit and volatile smartness, but it is all far too ephemeral to have any permanent value as literature. He edited The Gentleman's Journal, but is perhaps best remembered for his translation of Don Quixote, and his concluding Urquhart's version ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn

... up Simpson's clues, easily discovered a shady side of Johnstone's past life, not compatible with the pompous panegyrics of the Indian press, the resolutions of a dozen clubs and societies, the minutes of the Bank of Bengal, and other mortuary literature of a complimentary nature. It was some old curse come down upon the defenseless man in his old age! And so no one ever sought for the solution of the mystery in the deep dejection of Ram Lal Singh, who vainly mourned for his lost jewels and money. Fear tied ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage

... point out, at the present stage of my work, its principal effect on philosophy. It cannot be denied that pantheism has made great progress in our age. The writings of a part of Europe bear visible marks of it: the Germans introduce it into philosophy, and the French into literature. Most of the works of imagination published in France contain some opinions or some tinge caught from pantheistical doctrines, or they disclose some tendency to such doctrines in their authors. This appears to me ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville

... my mother would not suffer her to discover any defect in one that had been formed by her instructions, and had all the excellence which she herself could boast. She told me that nothing so much hindered the advancement of women as literature and wit, which generally frightened away those that could make the best settlements, and drew about them a needy tribe of poets and philosophers, that filled their heads with wild notions of content, and contemplation, and virtuous obscurity. ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson

... earliest of the Vedas representing the ancient faith seem to recognize a supreme power and intelligence—God—as the common father of the race, to whom prayers and sacrifices were devoutly offered. Freeman Clarke quotes from Mueller's "Ancient Sanskrit Literature" one of the hymns in which the unity of God is ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord

... the common schools in Boston. Miss Scott's teachers spoke so encouragingly of her work that the girl was determined to have a college education. She paid particular attention to the study of language and literature, and she is now a fluent linguist and a member of the Idier and German clubs. She has contributed considerably to college and ...
— History of Negro Soldiers in the Spanish-American War, and Other Items of Interest • Edward A. Johnson

... But their mental instruction was by no means neglected; quite the contrary. The most eminent men, savans and artists, did not shrink from the philanthropic duty of instructing the young in this remarkable institution, and were employed as professors of sciences, history, music, and literature. The French language was made a matter of especial importance, and the pronunciation was taught by a new and infallible method of which Madame Moronval was the author. Besides all this, every week there was a public lecture, to which friends and relatives of the pupils were invited, and where ...
— Jack - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet

... observations which he made the other day, on the management of his workpeople, would have been thought original if they had been printed. The true artist knows that his hero must be a character shaping events and shaped by them, and not a babbler about literature. Frank, also, was so susceptible. He liked to hear her read to him, and her enthusiasm would soon be his. Moreover, how gifted he was, unconsciously, with all that makes a man admirable, with courage, with perfect unselfishness! ...
— Clara Hopgood • Mark Rutherford

... and it must be confessed, that it was marked in a peculiar manner by a spirit of great originality and enterprise, it being nothing less than a proposal to carry off, by force or stratagem, Mat Kavanagh, who was at that time fixed in the throne of literature among the Ballyscanlan boys, quite unconscious of the honorable translation to the neighborhood of Findramore which was intended for him. The project, when broached, was certainly a startling one, and drove most of them to a pause, before they were sufficiently collected ...
— The Hedge School; The Midnight Mass; The Donagh • William Carleton

... suitable books, especially for boys, it would be impossible to imagine. Whether of adventure, school life, or domestic interest, every story is alike marked with those wholesome and robust characteristics which form so valuable a feature in juvenile literature."—Christmas Bookseller. ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty

... been omitted. These omissions are distinctly designated. The punctuation and orthography of the original letters have been in the main exactly followed. I have thought best to print much concerning dealings with publishers, as illustrative of the material conditions of literature during the middle of the century, as well as of the relations of the two friends. The notes in the two volumes ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson

... he varied the monotony of his hunting expeditions, his banquets, and entertainments in the gardens in company with the women of the harem, by pleasures of a more refined nature, and that he took an unusual interest in the history and literature of the races who had become subject to his rule. As a matter of fact, there have been discovered in several of the ruined chambers of his palaces the remains of a regular library, which must originally have contained thousands of ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 8 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... and doubtless a careful detailed investigation would reveal still other partial causes, but the chief and determining cause must be lack of interest. And it is to be feared that instead of taking measures to arouse a permanent interest in good literature, which would in itself lead to the reading of standard works and would sustain the reader until he had finished his task, we have often tried to replace such an interest by a fictitious and temporary stimulus, due to appeals to duty, or to ...
— A Librarian's Open Shelf • Arthur E. Bostwick

... reading. Soon he would be a Doctor, and before he was thirty, a Herr Professor. The mother lamented that he had not military aspirations, considering that his tastes had somewhat distorted the lofty destinies of the family. Professorships, sciences and literature were more properly the perquisites of the Jews, unable, because of their race, to obtain preferment in the army; but she was trying to console herself by keeping in mind that a celebrated professor could, in time, acquire a social rank almost ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... whose mind has been a puzzle to men of letters. Even should we accept Macaulay's judgment on Boswell, and despise him as he despises him, yet it must surely be worth while to examine closely the early writings of an author, who has, "in an important department of literature, immeasurably surpassed such writers as Tacitus, Clarendon, Alfieri, and his own idol Johnson."[4] This Journal is like the youthful sketch of some great artist. It exhibits the merits which, later on, distinguished, in so high a degree ...
— Boswell's Correspondence with the Honourable Andrew Erskine, and His Journal of a Tour to Corsica • James Boswell

... in Woolstone-lane he looked fagged and harassed, but talked of all things in sky, earth, or air, politics, literature, or gossip, took the bottom of the table, and treated the Parsonses as his guests. Honora, however, felt that something was amiss; perhaps Lucilla engaged to Lord William; and when, after luncheon, he followed her to the cedar room, she began ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge

... eyes gleamed. She took the package eagerly. She never lost an opportunity of reading compromising letters. She enjoyed them as literature, and there was never any knowing when they might come ...
— A Man of Means • P. G. Wodehouse and C. H. Bovill

... am not a great authority on literary questions, but I certainly do hold that Russian literature is not Russian, except perhaps Lomonosoff, ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... felt that magazine literature should be even cheaper than it was, and to that thought in his mind his fingers responded, so that when the advertisement appeared, ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok

... information, a great part of which has hitherto been inaccessible to English readers. His enthusiasm will have a very useful effect if it leads the people of this country to study and admire the ancient civilization and the splendid literature of our ...
— The Land of the Long Night • Paul du Chaillu

... date, and the work was formally pronounced unreadable. Goethe followed from afar by Emerson, had foreseen the "inevitable increase of Oriental influence upon the Occident," and the eagerness with which the men of the West would apply themselves to the languages and literature of the East. Such garbled and mutilated, unsexed and unsoured versions and perversions like Lane's were felt to be survivals of the unfittest. Mr. John Payne (for whom see my Foreword, vol. i. pp. xi.-xii.) resolved to give the world the first honest and ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton

... he held an assembly of his courtiers, at which all the ambassadors and strangers of quality about the court were present; and where they not only entertained one another with news and politics, but also by conversing on the sciences, history, poetry, literature, and whatever else was capable of diverting the mind. On that day a eunuch came to acquaint him with the arrival of a certain merchant from a distant country, who, having brought a slave with him, desired leave to shew her to his majesty. "Give him admittance ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 3 • Anon.

... eager to follow those friends who had preceded him to Oxford as scholars of Balliol; he was keenly interested in all intellectual pursuits; he turned for his daily pleasure to literature or history; but alongside of it all, or rather through it all, underlying it all, giving earnestness and fervour, the true unselfish quality, to it all, there was burning in his heart a consuming zeal for the good of his house and school. "For my brethren ...
— Sermons at Rugby • John Percival

... Paris is very agreeable. Literature, the fine arts, and the general occurrences of the day, furnish the topics for conversation, from which ill-natured remarks are exploded. A ceremoniousness of manner, reminding one of la Vieille Cour, and probably rendered a la mode ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner

... about the fox that carried off a turkey before breakfast. This book is full of fellowship untroubled like theirs, and made noble by a courtesy that has gone perhaps out of the world. I do not know in literature better friends and lovers. When one of the Fianna finds Osgar dying the proud death of a young man, and asks is it well with him, he is answered, "I am as you would have me be." The very heroism of the Fianna is indeed but their pride and joy in one another, ...
— Gods and Fighting Men • Lady I. A. Gregory

... the material occupations and pleasures of life, wholly engrossed in trade, in the breeding of cattle, in the framing and enforcing of revenue regulations, in the chicanery of the law, the objects of political envy, in the base trade of the lower literature, or in the heartless, hollow vanities of an eternal dissipation. Every generation, in every country, will bequeath to those who succeed it splendid examples and great images of the dead, to be admired and ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike

... become ridiculous. I couldn't bear that. A later teacher, Captain Lee O. Harris, came to understand me with thorough sympathy, took compassion on my weaknesses and encouraged me to read the best literature. He understood that he couldn't get numbers into my head. You couldn't tamp them in! History I also disliked as a dry thing without juice, and dates melted out of my memory as speedily as tin-foil on a red-hot stove. But I always was ready to declaim ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley

... as we view it through her eyes. In the imaginative power that she has brought to these semi-historical sagas, and in the liquid flow of her rhythmical prose, she has shown herself to be a literary worker of whom we may well be proud: she has made a most estimable contribution to purely Canadian literature. ...
— Legends of Vancouver • E. Pauline Johnson

... you will enjoy. In your studies, make for yourself as much variety as possible. By that, I mean when you are tired of your Latin do not take up your Greek; take your mathematics, or your logic, or your literature,—any study that will give you an entire change. Change is rest; and this is truer even in mental work than in physical. Above all, do not worry. Nothing deteriorates the mind like this useless worry. When you have done your best over a lesson, do not weary and weaken yourself ...
— Miss Ashton's New Pupil - A School Girl's Story • Mrs. S. S. Robbins

... volume from which this e-book was prepared contains two of Beers' books, "An Outline Sketch of English Literature" and "An Outline Sketch of American Literature," which start on ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers

... thought was not always clothed in the best language, and often appeared in the slouching, slangy undress of the place and period, yet it never was rustic nor homespun, and sometimes struck me with its precision and fitness. Considerably softened toward him, I tried him with other literature. But vainly. Beyond a few of the lyrical and emotional poets, he knew nothing. Under the influence and enthusiasm of his own speech, he himself had softened considerably; offered to change horses with me, readjusted my saddle with professional skill, transferred ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte

... a humorous opera, the plot providing many amusing situations and the whole ending happily. It corresponds with the comedy in literature. ...
— Music Notation and Terminology • Karl W. Gehrkens

... farm must be that of producing wealth so that the modest comforts of life may be insured. But the minister must exalt the appreciation of those things that may be obtained without lavish expenditure of money, such as local entertainment produced by the community itself, literature, music, and art; and the simple pleasures that come from democratic association ...
— Church Cooperation in Community Life • Paul L. Vogt

... and the making of character. The busy man is tired at night and inclined to think that he has no time to give to reading with his boys. He may think, too, that reading childish stories is beneath his dignity. Such is not the case. There is a great abundance of literature that is manly, and at the same time interesting to a boy. If the father feels that he is past the time when he has any sympathy with the fairy stories and the little poems that the infants like, if he thinks the nursery rhymes are silly and the fables ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester

... many other references might be made, with little trouble, to foreign Memoires; and (perhaps still more to your correspondent's apparent purpose) to some amongst the Memoires that relate to inscriptions and topography, rather that amongst those relating directly to science or literature. However, the two parts of the subject cannot be effectively studied separately from each other; and I am not without a hope that these straggling notes may be of ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 18. Saturday, March 2, 1850 • Various

... Battery is quite near, and Williams has been round bringing my blankets, for it appears the drivers' kits have come on from Pynaar's River. Several fellows came round to see me, and Williams brought some duff, and Ramsey some light literature; Williams also brought a Times, in which I read about the massacre in China. I'm afraid the polyglot avengers will quarrel among themselves. Restless night. I believe I shall never sleep well under a roof again. A roof in London will ...
— In the Ranks of the C.I.V. • Erskine Childers

... opinion which they entertained of him; for he was descended from an ancient and illustrious family in Gaul; he had been liberally educated from his earliest childhood; he was eminent for modesty, prudence, humanity, courtesy, and literature. He always appeared superior to the post or place which he was filling, and was equally popular among high and low, and he was nearly the only man whose tongue was never unbridled, but who always reflected on what he was going to ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus

... last decade of the sixteenth century a company of Florentine gentlemen were in the habit of meeting at the house of Count Bardi for the study of ancient literature. Their attention had concentrated itself upon the drama of the Greeks, and the one thing which they sought to discover was the music of ancient tragedy, the stately and measured intonation to which the great periods of AEschylus, Euripides and Sophocles had been ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews

... and she had kept from those far-off days a very warm and affectionate feeling towards the Fatherland, as also a rather exceptionally good knowledge both of the German language and of old-fashioned German literature. Then had come a short engagement, followed by five years of placid, happy marriage with a minor canon of Witanbury Cathedral. And then, at the end of those five years, which had slipped by so easily and so quickly, she had found herself alone, with one little daughter, and woefully restricted ...
— Good Old Anna • Marie Belloc Lowndes

... money and will sacrifice much for it, but they are also full of idealism, as well as of moral and spiritual energy. The influence of the splendid body of Americans and Canadians who have turned their best forces of mind and language into literature and into political power for the conservation movement, is becoming stronger every day. Yet we are far from the point where the momentum of conservation is strong enough to arrest and roll back the tide of destruction; and this is especially ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday

... Pavlovna proved to be a great philosopher; she had a ready answer for everything; she never hesitated, never doubted about anything; one could see that she had conversed much with clever men of all kinds. All her ideas, all her feelings revolved round Paris. Panshin turned the conversation upon literature; it seemed that, like himself, she read only French books. George Sand drove her to exasperation, Balzac she respected, but he wearied her; in Sue and Scribe she saw great knowledge of human nature, Dumas and Feval she adored. In her heart she ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev

... first experience, I liked the big men's dinners very much. There was no general conversation; I talked exclusively to my two neighbours, but as they were always distinguished in some branch of art, science, or literature, the talk was brilliant, and I found the hour our dinner lasted a very short one. W. was very particular about not having long dinners. Later, at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, where we sometimes had eighty guests, the dinner was never over ...
— My First Years As A Frenchwoman, 1876-1879 • Mary King Waddington

... and of the tent, the more certain existence in settled habitations, the grandeur of empire acquired in a short period of enthusiastic rapture, the softening influence of luxury and unwonted riches, are so faithfully portrayed in the literature of the Arabs as to give us a picture of the spiritual life of the people which no mere massing of facts can ever give. Well aware of this themselves, the Arabs at an early date commenced the collection and preservation ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner

... would loll by the side of a fountain, and dream of the wonders of old days. Surrounded by his eunuchs, his priests, and his courtiers, he envied Leonidas, and would have emulated Themistocles. He was passionately devoted to the ancient literature of his country, and had the good taste, rare at that time, to prefer Demosthenes and Lysias to Chrysostom and Gregory, and the choruses of the Grecian theatre to the hymns of the Greek church. The sustained energy and noble simplicity of the character of Iskander, seemed to recall ...
— The Rise of Iskander • Benjamin Disraeli

... world, to learn the occult wisdom which the priests of On alone could teach. Thales, Solon, Eudoxus, Pythagoras, and Plato, all studied there, perhaps Moses too. It was also the birthplace of the sacred literature of Egypt, where were written on papyrus leaves the original chapters of the oldest book in the world, generally known as the "Book of the Dead," giving a most striking account of the conflicts and triumphs of the ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan

... year, and he knew many stars by name and could tell when such and such a one would be visible. Yet, though I tried to teach him the alphabet, he never got beyond "F," which he always pronounced "if." Perhaps his collapse in literature may have been due to persistent efforts to teach him the difference between "F" and "if" vocalised. He may have reasoned that so finicking an accomplishment was not worth acquiring. In his own tongue ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield

... Contrariwise, many a haloed pundit has had his occasional guffaw. Lincoln, had there been no Civil War, might have survived in history chiefly as the father of the American smutty story—the only original art-form that America has yet contributed to literature. Huxley, had he not been the greatest intellectual duellist of his age, might have been its greatest satirist. Bismarck, pursuing the gruesome trade of politics, concealed the devastating wit of a Moliere; his surviving epigrams are truly stupendous. ...
— Damn! - A Book of Calumny • Henry Louis Mencken

... to land, coping single handed with crocodiles and cameleopards, riding upon elephants, mastering tigers and young hyenas, visiting mosques and mausoleums. In every land he made collections of its greatest curiosities in art, literature, science, natural history, and politics. A sphinx, an obelisk, a winged bull from Nineveh, stuffed porcupines, live monkeys, fossil remains, a pinchbeck president of the United States, and many rare specimens even more curious, did he collect, and after ...
— The Magician's Show Box and Other Stories • Lydia Maria Child

... creating type, his wonderful imagination, his versatility, and his extraordinary impartiality; and to accord him his rightful place among the Immortals. Nevertheless we are still too near to him, to be able to focus him clearly, and to estimate aright his peculiar place in literature, or the ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars

... their Demeter, perfect in form and beautiful in expression and noble in action. This is far above the conceptions of nature or of a presiding genius over our lives, taking into account social order and marriage vows, which we find in Chinese literature or mythology. It is not difficult to perceive the reason why the Greeks, who rule the realms of philosophy and art and literature to-day, after the lapse of many centuries, are the superior people. Well does that ...
— By the Golden Gate • Joseph Carey

... or designing politicians may divert the order of things, but they cannot change our nature—they may create an universal taste for literature, but they will never unite it with habits of industry; and until they prove how men are to live without labour, they have no right to banish the chearful vacuity which usually accompanies it, by substituting reflections to make it irksome, and ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady

... Strawberry, little parties to dine there, and many jaunts to hurry Bromwich, and the carver, and Clermont, are my material occupations. Think of sending these 'cross the sea!-The times produce nothing. there is neither party, nor controversy, nor gallantry, nor fashion, nor literature-the whole proceeds like farmers regulating themselves, their business, their views, their diversions, by the almanac. Mr. Pelham's death has scarce produced a change; the changes in Ireland, scarce a murmur. ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole

... taken for models the monographic novels of the brothers de Goncourt, which have appealed more to me than any other modern literature. ...
— Plays by August Strindberg, Second series • August Strindberg

... reverse. There is an empire exempt from all natural causes of decay. Those triumphs are the pacific triumphs of reason over barbarism; that empire is the imperishable empire of our arts and our morals, our literature and our laws. ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... impressed upon the heart of every Christian professor. It is a liberality which shines more brightly, as reflected by one, whose religious education was drawn solely from the pure fountain of truth—the holy oracles; and however unlettered he was, as to polite literature or the learned languages, his Christian liberality can no more be enlightened by the niggard spirit of learned sectarians, than the sun could be illuminated by a rush-light. The inquiry was then, as, alas, it is too frequent now, Are there many that be ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... Court's pure air was not destined to oblivion. It was revived by the merest accident; the merest, that is, up to that date. There have been many merer ones since, unless the phrase has been incorrectly used in recent literature. ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan

... stories Mr. Trowbridge can write, the better for the boys of this generation. Flooded as our country is with literature of a dime-novel order, we have need of just such safe and interesting books as 'The Little Master,' 'Phil and His Friends,' 'Bound in Honor,' etc., to put into the hands of our ...
— Stand By The Union - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic

... the industry. His chapters on those branches are much too long for inclusion in full, but the following extracts tell the story in general outline. He states that the probability that sugar cane originally came from India is very strong, "as only the ancient literature of that country mentions sugar cane, while we know for certain that it was conveyed (from there) to other countries by travellers and sailors." The plant appears in Hindu mythology. A certain prince expressed a desire to be translated to heaven during ...
— Cuba, Old and New • Albert Gardner Robinson

... to him unasked, and abode not more than one day in any village, lest the vanities of the world should find entrance into his heart. This was the ideal life prescribed for a Brahman, and ancient Indian literature shows that it was to a large extent practically carried out. Throughout his whole existence the true Brahman practised a strict temperance; drinking no wine, using a simple diet, curbing the desires; shut off from the tumults of war, as his business was to pray, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various

... no time in making of all detected free-thinkers Pariahs. Thus we are told, in the introduction to the English translation of that very curious book, "The Tales of the Gooroo Simple," which should be read by every scholar, that all the true literature of the country—that which has life, and freedom, and humour—comes from the Pariahs. And was it different in those days, when Rabelais, and Von Hutten, and Giordano Bruno were, in their wise, Pariahs and Gipsies, roving from city to city, ...
— The English Gipsies and Their Language • Charles G. Leland

... can regret more sincerely than myself—no one has more cause to regret—the circumstances which placed this wealth of new material in my hands rather than in those of the true poet and brilliant critic, who, to enthusiasm for Byron, and wide acquaintance with the literature and social life of the day, adds the rarer gift of giving life and significance to bygone events or trivial details by unconsciously interesting his readers in ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero

... say cygnet, epoch of existence, without consciousness of the deeper instincts that prompted it. Only two things I consciously recognized,—that his truth of observation was the most exact and his chosen expression the most concentrated that I had yet found in literature. By that time my father had himself put me through the first two books of Livy, and I knew, therefore, what close-set language was; but I saw then that Livy, as afterward that Horace and Tacitus, were studiously, often laboriously, ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold

... now, but in those days the daring conception that a common soldier might turn out to be the missing heir of a baronet rang like a challenge in the ears of the older romanticism. It is her style, however, that is Ruby Binns's most enduring gift to English prose literature. Lean, restrained, economical, it holds (for me) the very spirit of the English race ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, May 3, 1916 • Various

... corporals, etc., in the Crimea, are collected and arranged. They are full of incident and pathos. Suffering, daring, and humor, the love of home, and the religious dependence of men capable of telling their own Iliad, make this a very powerful book. In modern times the best literature of a campaign will be found in private letters. We have some from Magenta and Solferino, written by Frenchmen; the character stands very clear in them. And here is one written by an English lad, who is describing a landing from boats in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... tragedian, and Tom Little, the great poet, on the subject of a new piece written by the latter, and presented for acceptance to the former by. Mr. Splitlungs, the intermediate friend of both. I discovered the title of this master-piece of dramatic literature to be no other than 'The Methodical Madman, or Bedlam besieged.' A little further on sat Dr. Staggerwit, who passes for a universal genius: he is a great chemist, and a still greater gourmand, moreover a musician, has a hand in the leading Reviews, a share m the most prominent of ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan

... to Professor John B. Watson and to Dr. T. P. Nunn for reading my MSS. at an early stage and helping me with many valuable suggestions; also to Mr. A. Wohlgemuth for much very useful information as regards important literature. I have also to acknowledge the help of the editor of this Library of Philosophy, Professor Muirhead, for several suggestions by ...
— The Analysis of Mind • Bertrand Russell

... Chateaubriand, some splendid pages on the French Revolution, Taine, Guizot, Mme. de Stael, Lamartine, etc., and sometimes rather light memoirs of the Regence and the light ladies of the eighteenth century, who apparently mixed up politics, religion, literature, and lovers in the most simple style. These last readings he always prepared beforehand, and I was often surprised at sudden transitions and unfinished conversations which meant that he had suppressed certain passages which he judged too improper ...
— Chateau and Country Life in France • Mary King Waddington

... an epoch in the history of English fiction, and, with its successors, exerted a wide influence upon Continental literature. It is appropriately included in a series which is designed to form a group of studies of English life by the masters of English fiction. For it marked the transition from the novel of adventure to the novel of character—from ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson

... jest the way with my man," said the little woman who took her ideas of life from the literature in The Hearthside. "He allus says that pore folks ought n't to have ...
— The Uncalled - A Novel • Paul Laurence Dunbar

... looseness and a vulgarity in the East India House writing, the literature of clerks which is quite disgusting. Our clerks write better than theirs, but they do not ...
— A Political Diary 1828-1830, Volume II • Edward Law (Lord Ellenborough)

... but a good time with things you enjoy so much, music, literature, and that sort of thing. Do you remember, Kate, the first time you met auntie, when we took ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor

... London Bridge what we have remarked it to be, the chief division in the whole course of the stream. This character it still maintains, and the life of the river from the bridge to the Nore is a totally different thing, with a different literature and a different accompanying art, from the life ...
— The Historic Thames • Hilaire Belloc

... literature, history, and philology will find the publications valuable. The Johnsonian News Letter has said of them: "Excellent facsimiles, and cheap in price, these represent the triumph of modern scientific reproduction. Be sure to become ...
— Essays on the Stage • Thomas D'Urfey and Bossuet

... took to talking a great deal about books, especially at meal times, and several literary papers appeared regularly on my study table. I came to the conclusion that they wished me to become a patron of literature, perhaps to collect a library or to invite poets to spend their holidays with us. I was quite willing to fall in with this plan, but I determined, privately, only to become acquainted with poets of a peaceable kind who wrote pastorals ...
— Lalage's Lovers - 1911 • George A. Birmingham

... beautiful; on the contrary, if you think over the matter, you will find that you actually do owe, and ought to owe, a great part of your pleasure in all cottage scenery, and in all the inexhaustible imagery of literature which is founded upon it, to the conspicuousness of the cottage roof—to the subordination of the cottage itself to its covering, which leaves, in nine cases out of ten, really more roof than anything else. It is, indeed, not so much the whitewashed walls—nor ...
— Lectures on Architecture and Painting - Delivered at Edinburgh in November 1853 • John Ruskin

... opportunities to make a comfortable living with a comparatively small expense. Older beekeepers, both on the farm and professional men, also are beginning to study beekeeping. They attend short courses, subscribe to scientific bee papers and study bee literature. With increased study and knowledge the whole status of the beekeeping industry is just now undergoing a rapid change. Professional beekeepers, men who devote their whole time to beekeeping, are increasing, and ...
— Trees, Fruits and Flowers of Minnesota, 1916 • Various

... joint-stock, in the kingdom, and the treasure-house, not only of the nation's gold, but of its commercial honor, so the Clarendon Press—traditionally careful in its selections and munificent in its rewards—might become the academy or central temple of English literature. If it would but follow up Professor Skeat's Chaucer with a resolution to publish, at a pace suitable to so large an undertaking, all the great English classics, edited with all the scholarship its wealth can command, I believe that before long ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... number of the Indian converts was out of all proportion to their meager advancement in Christian grace and knowledge; but with these indications of shortcoming in the missionaries there are honorable proofs of diligent devotion to duty in the creating of a literature of instruction in the barbarous languages ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon

... to the voice, or associated with the movements of the body, or with the dance, and consequently had not the independence which was gradually achieved, until it culminated in the symphony. Instrumental music adds nothing to literature, nor to the expression of ideas and sentiments, but in it pure music consists, and it is the very essence of the art. Literature and poetry belong to a definite order of ideas and emotions; music is only able to afford musical ideas and sentiments. Instrumental ...
— Myth and Science - An Essay • Tito Vignoli

... in the City of Diurnal Night I had never known his views on life, romance, literature, and ethics. We had browsed, during our meetings, on local topics, and then parted, after Chateau Margaux, Irish stew, flannel-cakes, cottage-pudding, and coffee (hey, there!—with milk separate). Now I was ...
— Options • O. Henry

... Old Song Jacobite "Auld Lang Syne" The Prince's Birthday The Tenth of June, 1715 White Rose Day Red and White Roses The Bonnie Banks o' Loch Lomond Kenmure Culloden The Last of the Leal Jeanne d'Arc Cricket Rhymes To Helen Ballade of Dead Cricketers Brahma Critical of Life, Art, and Literature Gainsborough Ghosts A Remonstrance with the Fair Rhyme of Rhymes Rhyme of Oxford Cockney Rhymes Rococo The Food of Fiction "A Highly Valuable Chain of Thoughts" Matrimony Piscatori Piscator The Contented Angler Off my Game The Property of a Gentleman ...
— New Collected Rhymes • Andrew Lang

... last his opportunity when the treacherous men of Savoy are admitted within Geneva's walls, and in a night of whirlwind fighting saves the city by his courage and address. For fire and spirit there are few chapters in modern literature such as those which picture the splendid defence of Geneva, by the staid, churchly, heroic burghers, fighting in their own blood under the divided leadership of the fat Syndic, Baudichon, and the bandy-legged sailor, Jehan ...
— Sally of Missouri • R. E. Young

... at the exquisite story of the Arrival of the Keg.[3] Of these let us not speak, but, regarding them with a tender pity not unmixed with wonder, pass to the beginnings of his actual literary life and to the history of his early married years. The literature a little preceded the life; but the life certainly determined ...
— Sir Walter Scott - Famous Scots Series • George Saintsbury



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