"Rote" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... hips, moved stiffly, without interest or spontaneous spirit, as though constrained and indifferent. Though the dances were licentious, they conveyed no meaning and expressed no emotion. The men gestured by rote, appealing mutely to the spectators, so that one might fancy them orators whose voices failed to reach one. There was no laughter, not even ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... often sliding from one tune to another in the same line or improvising as he went on. Finally, in 1721, the Rev. Thomas Walter of Roxbury, Mass., published a treatise, upon the grounds or rules of music or an introduction to the art of singing by rote, containing twenty-four tunes harmonized into three parts. The attempt to supersede the old Puritan tunes and restrict the liberty of the individual singers met with the greatest opposition and was long successfully resisted in all the churches in New England, ...
— The Two Hundredth Anniversary of the Settlement of the Town of New Milford, Conn. June 17th, 1907 • Daniel Davenport
... must 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 ...
— A Treatise on the Art of Dancing • Giovanni-Andrea Gallini
... for dates, and for learning by rote; but good in retaining a general or vague recollection of many facts. R.D.—Wonderful memory for dates. In old age he told a person, reading aloud to him a book only read in youth, the passages which were coming— knew the birthdays and death, etc., ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... Note, Syllable: Singing by rote means that the singer sings something learned by ear without regard to notes. Singing by note means that the singer is guided to the correct pitch by visible notes. Singing by syllable means that the singer sings the tones of a ...
— Music Notation and Terminology • Karl W. Gehrkens
... on its diurnal course. Luncheon was served at two by a trembling parlour-maid; the coffee was set in the hall, the cigar-box, the spirit-flame. Frodsham came for orders, Mr. Menzies reported Glyde absent without leave. These things were done by rote: yet the whole house knew the facts. Sanchia, dining in the middle of the day, plied her knife and fork with composure. It was her way to face facts once for all, tussle with them, gain or lose, and be done with them. She had been angry with Glyde, but now could think ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... but little occupation for his hands, and, apart from his memories, little for his mind. He read and reread his father's dying words until he knew them by rote, and could read them with shut eyes as he lay in his blanket in the wakeful hours of night. He would not admit to himself that he had a real belief in their message, and yet it was always with him in a fainter or a stronger fashion, and it ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... to "plug." In fact, he could not do it. Either his interest was aroused, and then he absorbed the matter at hand in the way he breathed, without the least conscious effort; or his interest remained unstirred, in which case no amount of mechanical application would help. Learning by rote offered no escape in the latter case, for his memory operated in the same way as the rest of his mind, sucking up what fitted it as a blotter sucks the ink, and presenting a surface of polished marble to any matter not germane according to ...
— The Soul of a Child • Edwin Bjorkman
... 'justice.' Every time you employ any of these terms, he said, you virtually imply a whole theory of life. If you would have an intelligent understanding of yourself and the world of which you form a part, you must cease to live by custom and speak by rote. You must seek to bring the manifold phenomena of the universe and the various experiences of life into some kind of unity and see them as co-ordinated parts ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander
... take no further interest in the elucidation of the truth," reported the judges, "and we recommend that he be chastised for contumacy." He was, at any rate, no witness of the scene which followed Olimpia's entry. There was that about her, a subdued haste, a deliberation, a kind of intensity got by rote, which fascinated the youngster and left him staring in ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... in her little mirror she carried at her belt, as was the fashion in France. They liked the touch of her soft hand on their heads, they were sometimes allowed to press their tawny cheeks against it. Then she would try to instruct them in the Catechism. They learned the sentences by rote, in an eager sort of way, but she could see ...
— A Little Girl in Old Quebec • Amanda Millie Douglas
... text as possible. These questions furnish an excellent topical analysis of the text.[3] In a certain sense they ask "what the book says," but the teacher is advised emphatically to discourage any such thing as committing the text to memory. The tendency to rote-learning is very strong. I had to contend with it in teaching history to seniors at Harvard twenty years ago, but much has since been done to check it through the development of the modern German seminary methods. (For an explanation of ...
— Civil Government in the United States Considered with - Some Reference to Its Origins • John Fiske
... bones. Thus, unversed in the deeper phases of causation, men are hurried unprepared into ranks of a noble profession to struggle as best they may, through lack of deeper knowledge, with the serious symptoms of disease—at first by rote but later, are tempted to ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann
... the 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, but when she tearfully explained ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun
... before his eighteenth or nineteenth year, was the common school 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 not been illustrated ...
— The History of Dartmouth College • Baxter Perry Smith
... stay, like a sacred peak whose lofty brow stands ever gilded in the setting sun. Forget you! little hazard: he whose heart is impressed with the absent's form, needs wear no miniature upon the breast; the scholar who knows his task by rote, needs not retain his eye ...
— The Advocate • Charles Heavysege
... madam," said I, and that answer proves how much you say these fundamental precepts by rote, and without any consideration. Ineffectual Calling is the outward call of the gospel without any effect on the hearts of unregenerated and impenitent sinners. Have not all these the same calls, warnings, doctrines, and reproofs, that we have? And is not ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg
... know that service all by rote, And there was many and many a lovely note; Some singing loud, as if they had complained; Some with their notes another manner feigned; And some did sing all out ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... well-a-day! A few cant phrases learnt by rote Each beardless booby spouts away, A Solon, in a ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 487 - Vol. 17, No. 487. Saturday, April 30, 1831 • Various
... more word which seems to me quite as good a candidate as any of the others, viz. roteur, a player on the rote, i.e. the fiddle used by the medieval minstrels, Chaucer says of ...
— The Romance of Names • Ernest Weekley
... 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]
... the Church Catechism, learned by rote, parrot fashion, had not awakened in the laundress's boy any keen sense of honour. He had a dim feeling that it was a shabby service which he was called upon to perform; but then of course Miss Pillby, who taught the young ladies, and who was no doubt a wise and discreet ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... ovra delle rote magne, Che drizzan ciascun seme ad alcun fine Secondo che le stella ...
— The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism • Franz Cumont
... Guiltlessness is a negative, sanctity is a positive state, and is acquired as the result of active correspondence with the will of God. In order that there may be this correspondence the will of God must be known, not merely as we know the things that we have learned by rote, but known in the sense of understood and appreciated. The will of God is knowable: that is, it has been revealed to man; but it needs to be effectively made known to the individual man. He must be convinced of the importance of divine truth to him. We ...
— Our Lady Saint Mary • J. G. H. Barry
... Several agent round her and tha ar interfer With mee eSpeSly William a StavSon he liveS her at enfield he Wanted mee to giv him one of you Sur klerS So he Wod be agent but i Wodent let hi m hav hit an he rote to you i SupoSe an haS got a Suplye of pillS an ar aruning a gant mee he iS Sell ing them at 20 centS a box i Want you to St op ...
— History of the Comstock Patent Medicine Business and Dr. Morse's Indian Root Pills • Robert B. Shaw
... These charitable visits had the same conventional stage-setting and accent. The machine-like gestures of the little preachers with arms too short for the work, were answered by words learned by rote, so false as to set one's teeth on edge. The comical words of encouragement, the "consolation lavishly poured forth" in prize-book phrases by voices suggestive of young roosters with the influenza, called forth emotional ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... wond'ring and suspense, Replied: "I see that thou believ'st these things, Because I tell them, but discern'st not how; So that thy knowledge waits not on thy faith: As one who knows the name of thing by rote, But is a stranger to its properties, Till other's tongue reveal them. Fervent love And lively hope with violence assail The kingdom of the heavens, and overcome The will of the Most high; not in such sort As man prevails o'er man; but conquers ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... Maister John Schorne, that blessed man born, For the ague to him we apply, Which judgeth with a bote; I beshrew his heart's rote That will trust him, and it ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... language. The "ciphering" of the lower schools expands into elementary mathematics in the higher; into arithmetic, with a little algebra, a little Euclid. But I doubt if one boy in five hundred has ever heard the explanation of a rule of arithmetic, or knows his Euclid otherwise than by rote. ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley
... lest 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; And truly, ...
— The True-Born Englishman - A Satire • Daniel Defoe
... Und halb im Schlummer, schaute ich Christus, Den Heiland der Welt. Im wallend weissen Gewande Wandelt' er riesengross Ueber Land und Meer; 10 Es ragte sein Haupt in den Himmel, Die Haende streckte er segnend Ueber Land und Meer; Und als ein Herz in der Brust Trug er die Sonne, 15 Die rote, flammende Sonne; Und das rote, flammende Sonnenherz Goss seine Gnadenstrahlen Und sein holdes, liebseliges Licht, Erleuchtend und waermend 20 ...
— A Book Of German Lyrics • Various
... And by such a man, of course the very smallest marks of favor are construed as more significant than open encouragement would be by a less poetic temperament. I have no doubt the poor fellow wears over his heart every rose-bud you ever gave him, and knows by rote every word of sympathy you ever said to him. And then that portrait,—what volumes it tells of itself! Fancy that ardent soul toiling over the canvas to reproduce from memory your image (you tell me you did not sit to him), and when the masterpiece of his life was finished, inviting ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... lady with the hat cum for you about for aclock i told her as you was out and she rote ...
— A Rogue by Compulsion • Victor Bridges
... 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: it is no more than ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... family—it will readily be seen that there was nothing to cause education to be concerned with any but one or two of the subjects which are included by Western peoples under that designation. It became at an early age, and remained for many centuries, a rote-learning of the elementary text-books, followed by a similar acquisition by heart of the texts of the works of Confucius and other classical writers. And so it remained until the abolition, in 1905, of the old competitive examination system, and the substitution of all that is included ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner
... in Saxon poetrie, most liberall endowed with wisdome, fortitude, justice, and temperance, departed this life;"[243] and right well did he deserve this eulogy, for as an old chronicle says, he was "a goode clerke and rote many bokes, and a boke he made in Englysshe, of adventures of kynges and bataylles that had bene wne in the lande; and other bokes of gestes he them wryte, that were of greate wisdome, and of good learnynge, ...
— Bibliomania in the Middle Ages • Frederick Somner Merryweather
... the finishing hand to her unhallowed work, by swearing away that life which her arts had rendered scarcely worth defending, could death have come unaccompanied by disgrace. With a manner betraying suppressed, but ill-concealed eagerness, and in language prompt and fluent, as if reciting by rote a carefully kept journal, she went on to detail every fault or neglect or impatient act of her relative, not sparing exposure of the most delicate domestic events, at the same time carefully suppressing all mention of his provocations. In reply to the question, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... to the purpose intended. The young reader is referred to nature itself rather than to books, and is taught to observe and investigate, and not to rest satisfied with a collection of dull definitions learned by rote and worthless to the possessor. The present work will be found a valuable and interesting addition to the somewhat overcrowded child's ...
— Freedom in Science and Teaching. - from the German of Ernst Haeckel • Ernst Haeckel
... words in a strange, semi-mechanical manner; very much as if she had learned the sentence by rote, and were repeating it without knowing what ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... 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
... mountain trout in the burn with her brother Murdoch or hung around his neck chains of daisies in childish glee. And she— Faith, she drew me out with shy questions till that part of my life which would bear telling must have been to her a book learned by rote. ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... be an actress; I cannot resign my real self for that vamped-up hypocrite before the lamps. Out on those stage-robes and painted cheeks! Out on that simulated utterance of sentiments learned by rote and practised before the looking-glass till ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... souls than he can properly instruct and direct in spiritual matters, so that he can give to all those who are infidels suitable instruction in Christian doctrine—not merely so that they know it by rote, but also so that they may understand (so far as they are capable of this) the signification of the words, and the mysteries contained therein. Thus, too, he will be able to make each and every one of them understand all that is necessary for them ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, V7, 1588-1591 • Emma Helen Blair
... arbitrators of rewards or punishments. The immunity which they enjoyed from war, allured many young men to enrol themselves in this order. Their education was a poetical one, for it was necessary to learn by rote several thousand verses, in which all the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XX. No. 557., Saturday, July 14, 1832 • Various
... went. He tells us how he surmounted these difficulties: sometimes by learning just enough of a language to translate into it some of the main Church formulas; sometimes by getting the help of others to patch together some pious teachings to be learned by rote; sometimes by employing interpreters; and sometimes by a mixture of various dialects, and even by signs. On one occasion he tells us that a very serious difficulty arose, and that his voyage to China was delayed because, among other things, the interpreter ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... not glance. Take no notice. She took no notice while he read by rote a solfa fable for her, ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... words of the prophet (Mic. vi. 9), 'The Lord's voice crieth to the city,' and to the country also, with an unusual and amazing loudness. Surely, it warns us to awaken out of all sleep, of security or stupidity, to arise, and take our Bibles, turn to, and learn that lesson, not by rote only, but by heart. 1 Pet. v. 8: 'Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the Devil goes about as a roaring lion, seeking whom amongst you he may distress, delude, and devour.'... Awake, awake then, I beseech you, and remain no longer under the dominion of that prince of cruelty and malice, ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... 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 ...
— Violin Mastery - Talks with Master Violinists and Teachers • Frederick H. Martens
... applied and best understood, can do no more but teach us prudence, moral honesty, and resolution, they thought fit, at first hand, to initiate their children with the knowledge of effects, and to instruct them, not by hearsay and rote, but by the experiment of action, in lively forming and moulding them; not only by words and precepts, but chiefly by works and examples; to the end it might not be a knowledge in the mind only, but its ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... which I drew painfully, with many yawns; history no glorious epic revealing as it unrolls the Meaning of Things, no revelation of that wondrous distillation of the Spirit of man, but an endless marching and counter-marching up and down the map, weary columns of figures to be learned by rote instantly to be forgotten again. "On June the 7th General So-and-so proceeded with his whole army—" where? What does it matter? One little chapter of Carlyle, illuminated by a teacher of understanding, were worth a million such text-books. Alas, for the hatred of Virgil! "Paret" (a shiver), "begin ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... 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 ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... ov th time, naimd Max Beerbohm, hoo woz stil alive in th twentieth senchri, rote a stauri in wich e pautraid an immajnari karrakter kauld "Enoch Soames"—a thurd-rait poit hoo beleevz imself a grate jeneus an maix a bargin with th Devvl in auder ter no wot posterriti thinx ov im! It iz a sumwot labud sattire ...
— Seven Men • Max Beerbohm
... 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 sum other ...
— The Bad Boy At Home - And His Experiences In Trying To Become An Editor - 1885 • Walter T. Gray
... 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 is a child of experience always, ...
— Synge And The Ireland Of His Time • William Butler Yeats
... stood a 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 ...
— The First of April - Or, The Triumphs of Folly: A Poem Dedicated to a Celebrated - Duchess. By the author of The Diaboliad. • William Combe
... keeping all the yeare long; any hearbes, fruit, or flowers in pickle; also pickle it selfe. Fr. compote, stewed fruit. The Recipe for Compost in the Forme of Cury, Recipe 100 (C), p.49-50, is "Take rote of p{er}sel. pasternak of rases. scrape hem and waische he{m} clene. take rap{is} & caboch{is} ypared and icorne. take an erthen pa{n}ne w{i}t{h} clene wat{er}, & set it on the fire. cast all ise {er}inne. whan ey buth boiled, cast {er}to peer{is}, ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various
... prophecies, neither will he give me cause for such regrets, for he never says a useless word, and does not exhaust himself by chattering when he knows there is no one to listen to him. His ideas are few but precise, he knows nothing by rote but much by experience. If he reads our books worse than other children, he reads far better in the book of nature; his thoughts are not in his tongue but in his brain; he has less memory and more judgment; he can only speak one language, but he understands what he is saying, and ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... house. I left nothing behind, the loss of which I regretted. I had purchased most of my own books with the product of my own separate industry, and, their number being, of course, small, I had, by incessant application, gotten the whole of them by rote. They had ceased, therefore, to be of any further use. I left them, without reluctance, to the fate for which I knew them to be reserved, that of affording ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... the truth, perfect beauty in both sexes is a more irresistible object than it is generally thought; for, notwithstanding some of us are contented with more homely lots, and learn by rote (as children to repeat what gives them no idea) to despise outside, and to value more solid charms; yet I have always observed, at the approach of consummate beauty, that these more solid charms only shine with that kind of lustre which ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... he's gone. And now, by your good leave, I'll repeat old Bardianna's Will. It's worth all Mardi's hearing; and I have so studied it, by rote ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... 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 who declares upon his solemn word The Voluntary system ...
— East Anglia - Personal Recollections and Historical Associations • J. Ewing Ritchie
... catechisms which had been her only lesson-books, and which were certainly not calculated to make learning attractive or interesting. The mode of instruction at Miss Green's was the old-fashioned one of saying lessons by rote from the said catechisms, and when the pupils had reached the end of the book they had to begin again ...
— Ruth Arnold - or, the Country Cousin • Lucy Byerley
... 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 ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... I did not learn much at the High School. My mind was never opened up by what was taught me there. It was a mere matter of rote and cram. I learnt by heart a number of Latin rules and phrases, but what I learnt soon slipped from my memory. My young mind was tormented by the tasks set before me. At the same time my hungry mind thirsted for knowledge ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... has made no difference to scholarship. His moral earnestness has made no difference to morality. He acquired scholarship by rote, politics by association, and morality by tradition. To none of these things did he bring the fire of original passion. The force in his youth was ambition, and the goal of his energy was success. No man ever ...
— The Mirrors of Downing Street - Some Political Reflections by a Gentleman with a Duster • Harold Begbie
... them. Do you hear the falls at my lake? the west wind brings that to us. When I am there and the rote is on the beach, it tells me it is the voice of the south wind giving notice of rain. All nature warns me. The swallow, the pig, the goose, the fire on the hearth, the soot in the flue, the smoke of the chimney, the rising and setting ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... the experience of mankind. Hence our study of history. But a study of history in the abstract is valueless. It must be concrete, real and living to have any significance for us. The schoolboy who learns by rote imagines the Greeks as outline figures of one dimension, clad in helmets and tunics, and brandishing little swords. That is like thinking of Jeanne d'Arc as a suit of armor or of Theodore Roosevelt ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train
... thought of folly Ravidus (poor churl!) Upon my iambs thus would headlong hurl? What good or cunning counsellor would fain Urge thee to struggle in such strife insane? Is't that the vulgar mouth thy name by rote? 5 What will'st thou? Wishest on any wise such note? Then shalt be noted since my love so lief For love thou sued'st to thy ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... through all these years. I had left the dame's school, where the rule of long division proved my pons asinorum, and went to a man's school, where I earned my schooling by making the fires and sweeping the schoolroom, and here I learned some Latin and the higher rules in arithmetic by rote, always with the reputation of a stupid boy, good in the snowball fights of the intermission, when we had two snow forts to capture and defend; in running foot-races, the speediest, and in backhand wrestling, the strongest, but mentally hopeless. ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... a ramble in the country. He may, or may not, be able to tell us much of his adventures on that occasion, for whatever he can recall is due to a mental operation of a different character from that which enabled him to learn his lesson. There is here no question of learning by rote, of memorizing, but of capacity to recall to mind a past experience. The boy who is clever at memorizing a passage from Shakespeare may not have a good memory at all for recalling past events. To understand why this is so we must examine these two forms of Memory more closely ...
— Bergson and His Philosophy • J. Alexander Gunn
... B.A. Examination, it was...necessary to get up Paley's 'Evidences of Christianity,' and his 'Moral Philosophy'... The careful study of these works, without attempting to learn any part by rote, was the only part of the academical course which...was of the least use to me in the education of ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... himself upon the bed without undressing. He had no inclination to sleep, but his fatigue, bodily and mental, overcame him unawares as he lay listening to the wind which swept through the mountain-gorges, and rose and fell monotonously with a sound like the rote of the sea. It was a vision of the sea that filled his unrestful slumber: Ruth was dead, she had died in his arms, and he was standing woe-begone, like a ghost, on the deck of a homeward bound ship, with the gray, illimitable waste ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... I might be good once. I used to say my own prayers then. Now I speak them but by rote, and feel ashamed—yes, ashamed to speak them. Is it not horrid to say them, and next morning to be no better than you were last night? Often I revolt at these as at other things, and am dumb. The Vicar comes to see us at Newcome, ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... 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, ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... shalt not commit doldrum." Ladies and gentlemen, I confess, also, that I don't like those schools, even though the instruction given in them be gratuitous, where those sweet little voices which ought to be heard speaking in very different accents, anathematise by rote any human being who does not hold what is taught there. Lastly, I do not like, and I did not like some years ago, cheap distant schools, where neglected children pine from year to year under an amount of neglect, want, and youthful misery far too sad even to be glanced ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens
... Devereux thought; but as fine a gentleman, to speak honestly, and as handsome, as well dressed, and as pleasant to listen to, with that sweet low voice and piquant smile, as any. Besides he could draw, and had more yards of French and English verses by rote than Aunt Becky owned of Venetian lace and satin ribbons, and was more of a scholar than he. He? He!—why—'he?' what the deuce had Devereux to do with it—was he vexed?—A fiddle-stick! He began to flag with Miss Ward, the dowager's niece, and was glad when the refined ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... "Simple, says ye!" remarked Mr. Dooley. "Simple like th' air or th' deep sea. Not complicated like a watch that stops whin th' shoot iv clothes ye got it with wears out. Whin Father Butler wr-rote a book he niver finished, he said simplicity was not wearin' all ye had on ye'er shirt-front, like a tin-horn gambler with his di'mon' stud. ...
— Mr. Dooley in Peace and in War • Finley Peter Dunne
... /n./ [by analogy with 'typo'] A momentary, correctable glitch in mental processing, especially one involving recall of information learned by rote; a bubble in the stream of consciousness. Syn. {braino}; see also {brain fart}. ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... stole. don't speke wun word tu a livin sole bout this coz I don't want nobodi tu kno i hav got enny mony. yu wont now wil yu. i am first rate heer, only that gude fur nuthin snipe of liz madwurth is heer yit—but i hop tu git red ov her now. yu no i rote yu bout her. give my luv to awl inquiren friends. this is from your sister ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... rote, as they had learned in childhood. It was the tiresome repetition of going over and over and over the lines of a poem or the numbers of the multiplication table until the pathway was a deeply trodden furrow in the brain. ...
— The Fourth R • George Oliver Smith
... 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
... most 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 ...
— A Short View of the Frauds and Abuses Committed by Apothecaries • Christopher Merrett
... is the common Measure of all Numbers.) And, here, Numbers are become, as Lynes, Playnes and Solides: some tymes Rationall, some tymes Irrationall. And haue propre and peculier characters, (as [2rt]. [3rt]. and so of other. Which is to signifie Rote Square, Rote Cubik: and so forth:) & propre and peculier fashions in the fiue principall partes: Wherfore the practiser, estemeth this, a diuerse Arithmetike from the other. Practise bryngeth in, here, diuerse compoundyng of Numbers: as some tyme, two, three, foure ...
— The Mathematicall Praeface to Elements of Geometrie of Euclid of Megara • John Dee
... corrupte Iugement Wo worthe delyte in worldely rychesse Wo worthe bebate without extynguyshment Wo worthe your wordes so moche impacyent Wo worthe you vnto whome I dyde bote And wo worthe you that tere me at the rote ...
— The Conuercyon of swerers - (The Conversion of Swearers) • Stephen Hawes
... 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
... sooner only the sensor wont let me tell where I am an I couldnt think of nothin else to say. This is the third letter Ive rote since we landed. Im a little worried about the other two cause the Captin said we couldnt menshun the names of no places. So I just addressed them to ...
— "Same old Bill, eh Mable!" • Edward Streeter
... Sir William de Pakington, the prince's own herald and scrivener," whispered Sir Nigel, as they pulled up amid the line of knights who waited admission. "Ill fares it with the man who would venture to deceive him. He hath by rote the name of every knight of France or of England; and all the tree of his family, with his kinships, coat-armor, marriages, augmentations, abatements, and I know not what beside. We may leave our horses here with the varlets, and push forward with ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... worst had brought me balm: 'Twas but the tempest's central calm. Vague sinkings of the heart aver That dreadful wrong is come to her, And o'er this dream I brood and dote, And learn its agonies by rote. As if I loved it, early and late I make familiar with my fate, And feed, with fascinated will, On very dregs of finish'd ill. I think, she's near him now, alone, With wardship and protection none; Alone, perhaps, in the hindering stress Of airs that clasp him with ...
— The Victories of Love - and Other Poems • Coventry Patmore
... to any religious organisation is that a body of men should arise in its ranks, and hold its positions of trust, who have learned its great fundamental doctrines by rote out of the catechism, but have no experimental knowledge of their truth inwrought by the mighty anointing of the Holy Ghost, and who are destitute of "an unction from the Holy One," by which, says John, "ye know all things" (1 John ...
— When the Holy Ghost is Come • Col. S. L. Brengle
... 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 ...
— Autobiography of Frank G. Allen, Minister of the Gospel - and Selections from his Writings • Frank G. Allen
... change that note To which fond love hath charm'd me, Long, long to sing by rote, Fancying that that harm'd me: Yet when this thought doth come, "Love is the perfect sum Of all delight," I have no other choice Either for pen or voice To ...
— Tudor and Stuart Love Songs • Various
... 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
... 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, ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... 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 ...
— Domestic pleasures - or, the happy fire-side • F. B. Vaux
... norysshed in doctryne. In age is gyuen vnto al Inconuenyence. But nought shall make youthe soner forto inclyne. To noble maners: nor Godly dysciplyne: Than shal the doctryne of a mayster wyse and sad: For the rote of vertue and wysdome ...
— The Ship of Fools, Volume 1 • Sebastian Brandt
... consider words picked up at random and learned by rote speech. The Fuzzies have merely learned to associate that sound with a specific human, and use it as a signal, ...
— Little Fuzzy • Henry Beam Piper
... delays his return for two months, you 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 ...
— Both Sides the Border - A Tale of Hotspur and Glendower • G. A. Henty
... talk 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
... visit on thy stately head Aught that thy mouth hath sworn, or thy two eyes have said.... He came, and it was dark. He came, and sighed Because he knew the sorrow,—whispering low, And fast, and thick, as one that speaks by rote: "The vessel lieth in the river reach, A mile above the beach, And she will sail at the turning o' the tide." He said, "I have a boat, And were it good to go, And unbeholden in the vessel's wake Look on the man thou lovedst, and forgive, As he embarks, a shamefaced ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Jean Ingelow
... turned," Would cry, "Ah, frosty fire, where I am burned, Yet dying bless the flame that is my bane!" With which to clasp her closer was he fain, To touch in love, and feast his eyes to see Her quiver at his touch, and laugh to be The plucker of such chords of such a rote; And laughing stoop and kiss her milky throat, Then see her shut eyes hide what he had done. "Nay, shut them not upon me, nay, nor shun My worship!" So he said; but she, "They fade, But are not ...
— Helen Redeemed and Other Poems • Maurice Hewlett
... that 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; When Zephyrus eke with his sote brethe Enspired hath in every holt and hethe The tendre croppes—and the yonge Sonne Hath in the Ram his halfe cours ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 78, April 26, 1851 • Various
... Rousseau, who took a good deal of notice of Edgeworth's son; he judged him to be a boy of abilities, and he thought from his answers that 'history can be advantageously learned by children, if it be taught reasonably and not merely by rote.' 'But,' said Rousseau, 'I remark in your son a propensity to party prejudice, which will be a great blemish ...
— Richard Lovell Edgeworth - A Selection From His Memoir • Richard Lovell Edgeworth
... must win the public vote, Philistia! Observe the High Church curate's coat, The realistic hansom note! Ah, happy land untouched of blight, Smirks, Bishops, Babies, left and right, We know thine every charm by rote, Philistia! ...
— Rhymes a la Mode • Andrew Lang
... by one who has done it very often before, but who requires just a little prompting to set him off, on getting which, the whole familiar routine presents itself before him, and he repeats his task by rote. Surely then we are justified in suspecting that there must have been more bona fide personal recollection and experience, with more effort and failure on the part of the infant ...
— Life and Habit • Samuel Butler
... wofull mynde / beholdynge than the ayre Alas he sayth / what nedeth to deuyse Ony suche pastyme / here for to repayre Where is my conforte / where is my lady fayre Where is my Ioye / where is now all my boote Where is she nowe / that persed my herte rote ...
— The coforte of louers - The Comfort of Lovers • Stephen Hawes
... latter [Euclid] it is hardly possible, at least not near so easy as in Logic, to present the semblance of preparation by learning questions and answers by rote:—in the cant phrase of undergraduates, ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... have been silent; for the Captain, quite displeased, said, "What signifies asking them girls? Do you think they know their own minds yet? Ask 'em after any thing that's called diversion, and you're sure they'll say it's vastly fine-they are a set of parrots, and speak by rote, for they all say the same thing: but ask 'em how they like making puddings and pies, and I'll warrant you'll pose 'em. As to them operas, I desire I may hear no more of their liking such nonsense; and for you, Moll" (to his ...
— Evelina • Fanny Burney
... grammar is not taught thus: boys are introduced to a jargon about matters meaningless, and they are naturally as much enchanted as if they were listening to a chimaera bombinans in vacuo. The grammar, to them, is a mere buzz in a chaos of nonsense. They have to learn the buzz by rote; and a pleasant process that is—a seductive initiation into the mysteries. When they struggle so far as to be allowed to try to read a piece of Greek prose, they are only like the Marchioness in her experience of beer: she once had a sip of it. Ten lines of ...
— Essays in Little • Andrew Lang
... good deal, and nearly always alone, one has occasion to gauge the deep dreariness of human beings pure and simple, when, so to speak, the small, learnt-by-rote lessons of civilization, of kindness, graciousness, or intelligence, are not being called into play by common business or acquaintanceship. There, in the train, they sit in the elemental, native dreariness of their more practical, ungracious demand on life; not bad ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee |
