"Well-read" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... taste of Mr. Moore for music. "Nor has he neglected those more solid attainments which should ever distinguish the well-bred gentleman, for he is an excellent general scholar, and particularly well-read in the literature of the middle ages. His conversational powers are great, and his modest and unassuming manners have placed him in the highest rank of cultivated society." Although his reputation is so well established, he speaks of himself with his wonted ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 12, No. 349, Supplement to Volume 12. • Various
... with dancing, card-playing, hard drinking, and loose living of every description. It is true that the intellectuals and worldly folk in general did not share this prejudice. Walter Scott had made novel-reading common among the well-read; but the narrower sectarians in England, the people of the back country and the small towns in America, learned to regard the novel as unprofitable, if not positively leading toward ungodliness, and their unnumbered descendants ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... among the republicans, are the most sincere and have the most faith; for they have long been such, after much thought, study and as a matter of principle. Nearly all of them are well-read educated men, reasoners, philosophers, disciples of Diderot or of Rousseau, satisfied that absolute truth had been revealed by their masters, thoroughly imbued with the Encyclopedie[3337] or the Contrat Social, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... the pages of the well-read essays, with their pictures of good Sir Roger de Coverley, Will Honeycomb, and the rest of that happy crew. And over what portrait do we linger more lovingly than that of the Spectator himself, wherein there is many ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... among others, not much has been said in this sketch about Wesley's opinions, because they were different at different stages of his life. Moreover, though Wesley was an able man and a well-read man, and could write in admirably lucid and racy language, he can by no means be ranked among theologians of the first order. He could never, for instance, have met Dr. Clarke, as Waterland did; or, to compare him with one who was brought into contact with him, he could never have written ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... who had been married to a sister of King Francis, the husband of King Isabella, but had been separated from her after, as he declared, she had tried to cut his throat. As witness to his connubial difficulties, he showed a large scar across his throat. He was well-read and, amongst other things, enthusiastically admired Scandinavian literature because it had produced the world's greatest poet, Ossian, with whom he had become acquainted in Cesarotti's Italian translation. ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... entertainment given here for some charity, when he sang that beautiful tenor song from "The Bohemian Girl," "Then You'll Remember Me," and it has been a favorite with me ever since. W. K. Bull, who presided over so many municipal elections, and was a very well-read man, also took part, giving a reading on Australia, and ending ...
— Some Reminiscences of old Victoria • Edgar Fawcett
... him with it, and he did not deny it; only put it from him, laughing. What's the harm? Poor Jack was always a good-natured, honourable fellow, uncommonly clever and amusing—a well-read man, too; and Owen is safe enough—no one could try ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... or robust business, or literature, and they are joined by women (whose company is always welcome), the conversation is pretty sure to take a lower mental plane, to become more personal, more frivolous, accommodating itself to quite a different range? Do the well-read, thoughtful women, however beautiful and brilliant and capable of the gayest persiflage, prefer to talk with men, to listen to the conversation of men, rather than to converse with or listen to their own sex? If this is true, why is it? Women, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... sailor-like qualities upon which he prided himself so much as upon the superior acuteness of his understanding, which he delighted to display in discussions with the red-bearded and somewhat consequential sailmaker, who had the reputation of being a well-read man, and ...
— The Pilot and his Wife • Jonas Lie
... reading . . ." she said cajolingly, evidently wishing to flatter him. "Do you know, George, what is one of the secrets of your success? You are very clever and well-read. What book ...
— The Lady with the Dog and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... have read "Foma" only in bits, now I shall read it properly. Gorky should not be published in parts; either he must write more briefly, or you must put him in whole as the Vyestnik Evropy does with Boborykin. "Foma," by the way, is very successful, but only with intelligent well-read people—with the young also. I once overheard in a garden the conversation of a lady (from Petersburg) with her daughter: the mother was abusing the book, ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... a clever, well-read individual! With him and the Public Prosecutor and the President of the Local Council I played whist until the cocks uttered their last morning crow. He is a ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... hundred instances of his generosity and greatness of mind whilst living with her; how a Royal Duchess had stopped and admired him in Kensington Gardens; how splendidly he was cared for now, and how he had a groom and a pony; what quickness and cleverness he had, and what a prodigiously well-read and delightful person the Reverend Lawrence Veal was, George's master. "He knows EVERYTHING," Amelia said. "He has the most delightful parties. You who are so learned yourself, and have read so much, and are so clever and accomplished—don't ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... of you to say so, Howard," said Mr. Sandys delightedly. "Really quite a compliment! And I assure you, you don't know what a pleasure it is to have a talk like this with a man like yourself, so well-read, so full of ideas. I envy Jack his privileges. I do indeed. Now dear old Pembroke was not like that in my days. There was no one I could talk to, as Jack tells me he talks to you. A man like yourself is a vast improvement on the old type of ...
— Watersprings • Arthur Christopher Benson
... Many otherwise well-read people, while admitting that Lutherans are Protestants, suspect that their system is still imbued with the leaven of Romanism. In their classification of churches they are disposed to place us ...
— The Lutherans of New York - Their Story and Their Problems • George Wenner
... loveliest girl God ever made, but you're not a blue-stocking. You're not college bred, or even well-read." ...
— Patty Blossom • Carolyn Wells
... unsurpassed. He was ever "correct," and delivered a judgment that commended itself on the instant; it was given with such weight and persuasion. This correctness of judgment extended to most things, politics, character, literature, and was pleasant to listen to. He was one of the old well-read school, and was never without his edition of Shakespeare, the Globe one, which he took with him on his journeys. He had a way of lightly emphasising the beauty of a special passage ...
— John Forster • Percy Hethrington Fitzgerald
... the Entertainment of Children." This is, perhaps, the first printed acknowledgment in America that pictures were commendable to parents because entertaining to their offspring. Such an idea put into words upon paper and advertised in so well-read a sheet as the "Boston Evening Post," must surely have impressed fathers and mothers really solicitous for the family welfare and anxious to provide harmless pleasure. This pictorial element was further encouraged by Franklin, when, in 1747, he reprinted, probably for the first time in this ...
— Forgotten Books of the American Nursery - A History of the Development of the American Story-Book • Rosalie V. Halsey
... young soul, that takest hearts by storm, And chills them into sorrow with a look! Some minds are open as a well-read book; But here the leaves are still uncut—unscanned, The volume clasped and sealed, and all the warm And passionate exuberance of love Held in submission to these threadbare flaws And creeds of weaknesses, poor human ...
— Hesperus - and Other Poems and Lyrics • Charles Sangster
... the evening was over. She was a well-read girl, and at home it was but seldom that she met any men who had interests outside their business or their sports. Jimmy was an entirely new type to her, and yet, as she was well aware, he belonged to a family whose standing ...
— People of Position • Stanley Portal Hyatt
... take you in, my dear," said the Archdeacon. "And he seems a very clever, well-read man, I am sure you will find him easy ...
— The Autobiography of a Slander • Edna Lyall
... across another example of the manifold uses to which a private library can be put. A friend had given me a letter of introduction to a collector with whom he desired me to become acquainted. I was given to understand that the fellow-spirit was an exceedingly well-read man, and something ...
— The Book-Hunter at Home • P. B. M. Allan
... preserving his self-respect before that spiritual self which we call conscience led him to attach consequence to the most apparently trivial actions. His merits and adventures became known, however, through his acquaintances, among the principal men of science in Paris, and some few well-read military men. The incidents of his slavery and subsequent escape bore witness to a courage, intelligence, and coolness which won him celebrity without his knowledge, and that transient fame of which Paris salons are lavish, though ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac
... Miss Grizzel in the same tone, "it is wonderful! Ah, yes, how true it is, Tabitha, that 'there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our philosophy'" (for Miss Grizzel was a well-read old lady, you see); "and from the very first, Tabitha, we always had a feeling that the child was ...
— The Cuckoo Clock • Mrs. Molesworth
... been a dreamer in this family, a well-read man whose acres and interests had got ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort
... "point a moral and adorn a tale,"' said the old woman (who, for a fairy, was particularly well-read). 'There, run along home, do, and scatter ...
— The Talking Horse - And Other Tales • F. Anstey
... wrote that, but you have no tears for others' woes, merely greeting them with ribald laughter," for Dorothy, with the well-read letter in her hand, was making the rafters ring with her merriment, something that had never before happened during her long tenancy of that room. Kate turned her head slowly round, and the expression on her face was half-indignant, half-humorous, ...
— A Rock in the Baltic • Robert Barr
... understood that the nobility of England are not necessarily either cultured or well-read. Literature to most of the titled gentry is a blank, my lord—it is so now and always has been so. Burke's brilliant books were not sufficient to make him famous except among the Elect Few; but the episode with Lord ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... anything, almost, within the ken of man, can be explained to another so that he will reasonably comprehend it; but not so with the Grand Canyon. I had an illustration of this but a few days ago. A member of my own household, keenly intelligent and well-read, who had heard my own descriptions a thousand and one times, and had seen photographs and paintings, without number, of the Canyon, came with me on her first visit to the camp where I am now writing. As the carriage approached the rim at Hotouta ...
— The Grand Canyon of Arizona: How to See It, • George Wharton James
... cousin and housekeeper. It seemed strange that the father and daughter were so companionable, for superficially they were entirely unlike. Mr. Royal was considered stern and shrewd, and, though a well-read man, eminently practical, more inclined to business than scholarship, while Elizabeth was dreamy, generous, wholly unacquainted with business of any kind, and it seemed too much uninterested in it ever to be acquainted. To most people the affection between them seemed only that of nature and ...
— The Bay State Monthly - Volume 2, Issue 3, December, 1884 • Various
... would do once in a while for half a day or so if flattered. The second son was named Surajah Dowlah Fewkes—the name was pronounced Surrager by everybody. Old Man Fewkes said they named him this because a well-read man had told them it might give him force of character; but it failed. He was a harmless little chap, and there was nothing bad about him except that he was addicted to inventions. When they came into ...
— Vandemark's Folly • Herbert Quick
... pertinent verses of your own in place of the conventional quotations. For example—"This is the forest primeval, I regret your last evening's upheaval," shows the young lady in question that not only are you well-read in classic poetry, but also you have no mean talent of your own. Too much originality, however, is dangerous, especially in polite social intercourse, and I need hardly remind you that the floors of the social ocean are watered ...
— Perfect Behavior - A Guide for Ladies and Gentlemen in all Social Crises • Donald Ogden Stewart
... detective work is never any good," as Henry, a well-read person in some respects, remarked. "It is well known ...
— Mystery at Geneva - An Improbable Tale of Singular Happenings • Rose Macaulay
... men of religion," "men who pray over what they do." With similar men, men who feared God and were devoted to public liberty, Cromwell won at Marston Moor; and so striking was the analogy, that at this hour it virtually forced itself on the well-read Hutchinson: for men of this stamp had once made a revolution in Boston, and as he looked out on this scene, perhaps scanned the concourse who passed from Faneuil Hall to the Old South, and read in their faces the sign of resolute hearts, he judged "their ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... "O good Brahmana, Brahmanas are worthy of all respect from me. Listen, O sinless one, to this story of a previous existence of mine. O son of an excellent Brahmana, I was formerly a Brahmana, well-read in the Vedas, and an accomplished student of the Vedangas. Through my own fault I have been degraded to my present state. A certain king, accomplished in the science of dhanurveda (science of archery), was my ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... not a well-read man by any means; his scholarship was that of an idle French boy who leaves school at seventeen, after having been plucked for a cheap French degree, and goes straightway into her Majesty's ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... his subject, his role, as usual, was that of the flatteringly eager enquirer. Needless to say, his learning had been acquired by diligent application within the last week, and that it had a very definite object behind it. The laird had but a smattering of the subject, but being an intelligent, well-read man, he was quite able to discuss Mr. Hobhouse's favourite pursuit, so that when his daughter entered the room she found herself in an atmosphere as little reminiscent of the mysterious stranger as it was possible to create ...
— The Man From the Clouds • J. Storer Clouston
... a cultivated court circle; but in Boston there was not only such a group of authors as we shall hardly see here again for hundreds of years, but there was such regard for them and their calling, not only in good society, but among the extremely well-read people of the whole intelligent city, as hardly another community has shown. New York, I am quite sure, never was such a centre, and I see no signs that it ever will be. It does not influence the literature of the whole country as Boston once did through ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... position for viewing the audience. He was immediately struck by the fact that here was no thoughtless, irresponsible crowd; rather one largely made up of men of grim determination and iron will. They were intelligent, well-read men too. They knew the history of their country, knew its weakness, and realised its faults. ...
— All for a Scrap of Paper - A Romance of the Present War • Joseph Hocking
... resent the intrusion of this long-haired, long-bearded eccentric into the familiar little circle. But Marshall Elliott soon proved his legitimate claim to membership in the household of Joseph. He was a witty, intelligent, well-read man, rivalling Captain Jim himself in the knack of telling a good story. They were all glad when he agreed to watch the old ...
— Anne's House of Dreams • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... Besides, her husband would not have liked to see her taking part in long conversations. Political subjects were forbidden to her, and her great charm in Napoleon's eyes was that she did not interfere in such matters. She never tried to pass for a witty woman. Although she was well-read, she lacked the delicate observation, the ingenious comparisons, the jingling of brilliant phrases or words which compose what in France is called wit. She had no confidence in the character of the prominent Frenchwomen, of the romantic but unsentimental beauties who always expressed ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... Ohio, February 3, 1867. Both parents were of Negro descent. His mother was a Kentucky girl and his father a Canadian. Both parents were temperate and Christian in habits. Neither parent was college-bred, yet Charles' father was a well-read man, a keen thinker, and a master of debate. He had surrounded himself with several hundred choice books and one of the earliest ambitions of Charles was to ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... everything required by a first class yacht of her size, both for the comfort and safety of the voyager, as well as for fast sailing. Though Mr. Ramsay, her builder, was a ship carpenter, he was a very intelligent and well-read man. He had made yachts a specialty, and devoted a great deal of study to the subject. He had examined the fastest craft in New York and Newport, and had their lines in his head. And he was a very ingenious man, so that he had ...
— The Yacht Club - or The Young Boat-Builder • Oliver Optic
... mention of Crabbe reminds me of meeting two American Gentlemen at an Inn in Lichfield, some thirty years ago. One of them was unwell, or feeble, and the other tended him very tenderly: and both were very gentlemanly and well-read. They had come to see the English Cathedrals, and spoke together (it was in the common Room) of Places and Names I knew very well. So that I took the Liberty of telling them something of some matters they were speaking of. ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald in Two Volumes - Vol. II • Edward FitzGerald
... words;—a system of change that has probably given rise to an opinion, among some of the descendants of the earlier colonists, that the latter tongue is merely a patois of the former. This opinion, which so much resembles that certain well-read English scholars entertain of the plagiarisms of the continental writers, when they first begin to dip into their works, is not strictly true; since the language of England has probably bestowed as much on the dialect of which we speak, as it has ever received from the purer sources ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... of Cassiodorus is derived from his position rather than from his character. He was a statesman of considerable sagacity and of unblemished honour, a well-read scholar, and a devout Christian; but he was apt to crouch before the possessors of power however unworthy, and in the whole of his long and eventful life we never find him playing a part ...
— The Letters of Cassiodorus - Being A Condensed Translation Of The Variae Epistolae Of - Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator • Cassiodorus (AKA Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator)
... sustain themselves in intellectual dignity and affluence by large thoughts and sonorous phrases upon the nature of human society as a grand whole.[104] Even unconvinced whigs who quarrelled with the arguments, admitted that the tories had found in the young member for Newark a well-read scholar, with extraordinary amplitude of mind, a man who knew what reasoning meant, and a man who ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... lieutenant, the very place he filled. He was a capital second lieutenant, while he would not have earned his rations as first. So well was he assured of this peculiarity in his moral composition, that he did not wish to be the first lieutenant of anything in which he sailed. A respectable seaman, a well-read and intelligent man, a capital deck officer, or watch officer, he was too indolent to desire to be anything more, and was as happy as the day was long, in the easy berth he filled. The first lieutenant ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... something like kindliness of sentiment at least in his heart, even though that heart were the coldest and the least susceptible that ever beat. The scenes through which they passed were of themselves calculated in the highest degree to excite a communion of soul. Hilda was clever and well-read, with a deep love for the beautiful, and a familiar acquaintance with all modern literature. There was not a beautiful spot on the road which had been sung by poets or celebrated in fiction of which she was ignorant. Ferney, sacred to Voltaire; Geneva, the birth-place of Rousseau; the Jura ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... was a poser, a fraud, a liar; the highest type of liar; the day-dreaming, well-read, genuinely inventive, highly imaginative, loving-it-for-its-own-sake liar. But to Skiddy every word he said was Gospel-true. He never doubted the captain for an instant. Life grew richer to him, stranger and more wonderful. It was like a personal distinction—a medal, ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... Administration a success. He kept his word with absolute good faith. He had been in the Civil War, and was a medal of honor man; and I think my having been in the Spanish War gave him at the outset a kindly feeling toward me. He was also a very well-read man—I owe to him, for instance, my acquaintance with the writings of the Finnish novelist Topelius. Not only did he support me on almost every public question in which I was most interested—including, ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... book-knowledge, and how, when at last they thought they had smothered the irrepressible prophecy of his genius in the quaking depths of Chatmoss, he had exclaimed, "Did ye ever see a boat float on water? I will make my road float upon Chatmoss!" The well-read Parliament men (some of whom, perhaps, wished for no railways near their parks and pleasure-grounds) could not believe the miracle, but the shrewd Liverpool merchants, helped to their faith by a great vision of immense gain, did; and so the railroad was ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... dreams of fluffs and frills, arrange a dream house and live therein. It should be quite unlike the Gorgeous Girl's apartment—but a roomy, sprawling affair with old furniture that was used and loved and shabby, well-read books, carefully chosen pictures, dull rugs, and oddly shaped lamps, a shaggy old dog to lie before the open fireplace and be patted occasionally, fat blue jugs of Ragged Robin roses at frequent intervals. Perhaps there would be a baby's toy left somewhere along the stairway leading to the nursery. ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... sage grave man," Talk'd of the Ghost in Hamlet, "sheath'd in steel:"— His well-read friend, who next to speak began, Said, "That was Poetry, and nothing real;" A third, of more extensive learning, ran To Sir George Villiers' Ghost, and Mrs. Veal; Of sheeted Specters spoke with shorten'd breath, And thrice he quoted "Drelincourt ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... in the Senate a man of matured years, who had never had a wife. He was a lawyer well-read in the old books, and versed in the adjudications which had determined that husband and wife were but one person, and the husband that person; and he expressed great fears in regard to meddling with this well-settled condition of domestic ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... only effect of temporary surrender is indefinite delay. The battle has still to be fought again with added difficulties later on. "The popular-class composer nowadays is not infrequently a thoroughly competent and well-read musician who, if he chose, could write really solid and substantial music."[30] So the frankly commercial musician who writes for the market has surrendered in one skirmish of spirit. Very possibly he gains the desired pieces of silver, but they are dearly paid for at the expense of his ...
— Spirit and Music • H. Ernest Hunt
... points out, the true source of inspiration was a passage in Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy—"the book," as Byron maintained, "in my opinion most useful to a man who wishes to acquire the reputation of being well-read with the least trouble" (Life, p. 48). Burton is discoursing on injury and long-suffering. "'Tis a Hydra's head contention; the more they strive, the more they may; and as Praxiteles did by his glass [see Cardan, De Consolatione, lib. ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... people seem gradually to lose the sense of larger and wider interests; they have little time to keep pace with the general questions of the day, and anything like sympathy or intellectual appreciation is very rare. I meet accomplished people, but seldom well-read ones; there is also too much talk about money: "where the treasure is, there will the heart be also;" and the incessant financial discussions are wearisome, ...
— Station Life in New Zealand • Lady Barker
... She is a very well-read woman is the mother; she keeps up to date in French literature as well as in English, and can talk by the hour about the Goncourts, and Flaubert, and Gautier. Yet she is always hard at work; and how she imbibes all her knowledge is a mystery. She reads when ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
... all a bookworm," said Suzette quickly, "though he's tremendously well-read. He's quite ...
— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki
... Mussulmans had beaten King Janus, who ruled over it, and had carried him beyond seas in triumph to Old Cairo, a prisoner and loaded with chains. Hereupon we were instructed by that learned man, Master Eberhard Windecke, who was well-read in the history of all the world—he had come to Nuremberg as a commissioner of finance from his Majesty, and Uncle Tucher had brought him forth to the Forest—he, I say, instructed us that the forefather ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... accord at Samuel's childhood and Hannah's solemn dedication of her first-born; no passages in the well-read book had been ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... minister with them, having organized a special party to bring in the books he had left in his cabin; they joined in prayer and thanksgiving for their successes; but this did not hinder them from scalping the men they killed. They were too well-read in the merciless wars of the Chosen People to feel the need of sparing the fallen; indeed they would have been most foolish had they done so; for they were battling with a heathen enemy more ruthless and terrible than ever was Canaanite or Philistine. The two largest ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt
... composed chiefly of the old families who formed the Hudson Bay Company and their descendants, many of whom have Indian blood in their veins. Their education, carefully begun by their parents, is often completed in Scotland, and they are well-read, intelligent people, as proud of their Indian as of their European descent. Many of them are handsome and distingue-looking. Their elegant appearance sometimes leads to awkward mistakes. One of these ladies, meeting ...
— A Trip to Manitoba • Mary FitzGibbon
... questions that are asked concerning Bucarest, even by persons who believe themselves well-informed, are highly amusing. One friend, who is really a well-read man, asked us shortly after our visit whether it was not a great continuous 'Mabille,' and he looked very incredulous when we told him that, although we had walked through and through it, and had carefully looked at all the posters announcing ...
— Roumania Past and Present • James Samuelson
... more and more power, because with more and more knowledge and "pureness;" and, as you say, there were probably nowhere in Britain such lectures delivered at that time to such an audience, consisting of country people, sound, devout, well-read in their Bibles and in the native divinity, but quite unused to persistent, ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... a pleasant woman, well-read, well-educated and widely travelled. She was, too, an excellent conversationalist. And yet, all the time we were talking, I could not help thinking of Lola, and wondering why Duperre's wife should ...
— The Golden Face - A Great 'Crook' Romance • William Le Queux
... gave to the formation of the catalogue. I likewise came upon a whole nest of the German classics which seemed to have kept their places undisturbed, in virtue of their unintelligibility. There must have been some well-read scholar in the family, and that not long before, to judge by the near approach of the line of this literature; happening to be a tolerable reader of German, I found in these volumes a mine of wealth inexhaustible. I learned from Mrs. Wilson that this scholar was a younger brother of Lord Hilton, ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... vivid as when, a youth of nineteen, he left for good, Maryland, his native state. Few men in the San Francisco bay region are more widely known than he. His ready wit, cheery laugh and fund of information—for he is extremely well-read—always insure for him an ...
— A Tramp Through the Bret Harte Country • Thomas Dykes Beasley
... and, with a grandeur of air, a dignified step, which caught the eye, but could not shake the doubts of the well-read Catherine, he led the way across the hall, through the common drawing-room and one useless antechamber, into a room magnificent both in size and furniture—the real drawing-room, used only with company of consequence. It was very noble—very grand—very charming!—was all that Catherine ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... "Well-read, Frank, and say, when you hear the contents, whether you would be particularly sorry to learn that the old lady had, as sailors say, her hands well greased, and a fast hold upon the moon? Read, d——n it, man! there's no ...
— International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 5, July 29, 1850 • Various
... the grave, against the devourers of the earth. Yes, he was gone—the old lion, worn out with many wounds, dead in his cage. Where could we replace him? There were gallant men amongst us, eloquent, well-read, earnest—men whose names will ring through this land ere long—men who had boon taught wisdom, even as he, by the sinfulness, the apathy, the ingratitude, as well as by the sufferings of their fellows. But where should we two find again the learning, the moderation, ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... of the "Hymn of Life," despite the commonplace and the navrante vulgarite which characterize the pseudo-Schiller-Anglo-American School. The same has been done to the words of Isa (Jesus); for the author, who is well-read in the Ingil (Evangel), evidently intended the allusion. Mansur el-Hallaj (the Cotton-Cleaner) was stoned for crudely uttering the Pantheistic dogma Ana 'l Hakk (I am the Truth, i.e., God), wa laysa fi-jubbati il' Allah (and within my coat is nought but God). His ...
— The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi • Richard F. Burton
... in love with any of them. I merely discovered some time since that I had a brain, and they happen to be the impulse that possesses it. You always have prided yourself that I am intellectual, and so I am in the flabby 'well-read' fashion. I feel as if my brain had been a mausoleum for skeletons and mummies; it felt alive for the first time when I began to read the newspapers in England. I want no more memoirs and letters and biographies, nor even of the history that is shut up in calf-skin. I want ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... would be far happier with him in this beautiful spot, remote from the world though it was. And his new comrades would appeal to her, Dermot, strong, capable, one who would always stand out from his fellows; Hunt grave, kindly, well-read; Burke witty, clever and good-hearted. And, little though Violet cared for her own sex, as a rule, surely in Mrs. Dermot she would find a friend. This happy wife, this loving mother, was so sweet and sympathetic that she would win the older woman's liking, while the two delightful children ...
— The Jungle Girl • Gordon Casserly
... historical allusions and analogies. He abounded in pregnant sayings culled from English, from Greek and Latin, and also from Persian, for he had learned the French of the East when he was at Haileybury studying for the Civil Service of the Honourable East India Company. Also he was fairly well-read in some branches of French literature and knew enough Italian to translate a quotation from Dante or from Tasso. He was also deeply read and deeply interested in Biblical criticism and in the statecraft of the Old Testament. His book on "Hebrew Politics" was hailed by theological students ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... following little inconsistency in a commonly-received tradition has led me, at the request of a large party of well-read and literary friends, to request your solution of the difficulty in an early Number ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 207, October 15, 1853 • Various
... of Strangwise or of Nur-el-Din. The rest of dinner was passed in conversation of a general order in which Mr. Mortimer showed himself to great advantage. He appeared to be a widely traveled, well-read man, with a fund of dry, often rather grim humor. And all the time Desmond watched, watched, unobtrusively but unceasingly, looking out for something he was confident of detecting through the suave, immobile ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams
... are discussing conditions in Europe. You must speak in one way to the man who has traveled and in an entirely different way to the man who has never gone abroad—in one way to the well-read man, in an entirely different way to the ignoramus. Let us say you are discussing urban life, urban problems. You must speak in one way to the man who lives in the city, in another to the man who lives in the country. Let ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... a strong sense of duty, imbued with deep religious feeling, Miss Milbanke lived to impress F. W. Robertson as "the noblest woman he ever knew" ('Diary of Crabb Robinson' (1852), vol. iii. p. 405). She was also a clever, well-read girl, fond of mathematics, a student of theology and of Greek, a writer of meritorious verse, which, however, Byron only allowed to be "good by accident" (Medwin, p. 60). Among her mother's friends were Mrs. Siddons, Joanna Baillie, and Maria ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... could scarcely brook the slow laziness with which the day dragged by, as if it knew its own beauty, and lingered to enjoy it. At last, however, the night came, the hour also, and punctually with it came Dr. Thorne, a kindly young physician, and a man of much promise, well-read, prompt, clear-headed, resourceful, and enthusiastically attached to his profession Mac tucked a volume of Shakspeare under his arm, and we made our way to Clarian's room forthwith. Here we found about a dozen students, ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... as a legacy to a dear friend of mine an old faded book, which I hope he will always prize as it deserves. It is a well-worn, well-read volume, of no value whatever as an edition,—but it belonged to Abraham Lincoln. It is his copy of "The Poetical Works of Alexander Pope, Esq., to which is prefixed the life of the author by Dr. Johnson." It bears the imprint ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... of inarticulate pain, And beats laborious. Cold ungenial looks Invade my sanctuary. Men of gain, Wise in success, well-read in feeble books, No nigher come, I pray: your air is drear; 'Tis winter and low ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald
... to occupy the attention of the men and myself, and so keep us from thinking of the sharks and our painful position, he proceeded to narrate all he knew about this curious marine fungus. He had a good deal to say, too, for Mr Marline was a well-read man and took a great interest in ...
— The White Squall - A Story of the Sargasso Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... been rather favourably impressed. He was a tall dark man of thirty-five, with more than the average endowment of good looks. He could tell a good story, had shot big game in most parts of the world, was well-read, intelligent, possessed unexceptionable manners, and yet—— Well, Winter had none of his various qualifications, but I would at any time far rather have had one friend like Winter than a hundred like ...
— The Motor Pirate • George Sidney Paternoster
... Pearson, Hooker, Blunt on the Reformation (a mere sketch which I read in a day or two at odd times), Commentaries, Trench's Books on Parables and Miracles, which are in my room at home, and would in parts interest you; he is a writer of good common sense, and a well-read man). But I of course want to be reading history as well, and that involves a good deal; physical geography, geology, &c., yet one things helps another very much. I don't work quite as methodically ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... all that she said about poets in general, and was delighted by her warm championship of his special vocation. As they went on talking for another quarter of an hour he recognized, without framing the admission in words, that Miss Campion was an exceedingly well-read person, and that she knew many authors—even poets—with whom he had the slightest acquaintance. Most of the people whom he met talked idle nonsense to him, as though their main object was to pass the time, or else they aired a superficial knowledge of the uppermost thoughts ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... full of inarticulate pain, And beats laboriously. Ungenial looks Invade my sanctuary. Men of gain, Wise in success, well-read in feeble books, Do not come near me now, your air is drear; 'Tis winter and low ...
— A Hidden Life and Other Poems • George MacDonald
... technic of their art or in defence of its value. Sidney, the poet, courtier, and soldier, wrote not from the musty alcoves of libraries. Webbe, it is true, was a pedant, but certainly not a scholar. Puttenham was a bad poet, a well-read man, and a courtier. Jonson's scholarship was thorough, but sweetened and ventilated by his activities as poet and dramatist. Bacon was a scholar, but even more a philosopher and a statesman. Milton, our most scholarly poet, during most of his life could not keep his mind and pen ...
— Rhetoric and Poetry in the Renaissance - A Study of Rhetorical Terms in English Renaissance Literary Criticism • Donald Lemen Clark
... be nearly eight, I think,' said Rowland, turning over the small, well-read Testament that had ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... Nirukta; those again that were conversant with astrology and learned in the properties of matter and the fruits of sacrificial rites, possessing a knowledge of causes and effects, capable of understanding the cries of birds and monkeys, well-read in large treatises, and skilled in various sciences. And the king, as he proceeded, heard their voices. And the retreat resounded also with voice of men capable of charming human hearts. And the slayer of hostile heroes also ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... and unvarying type which they have in their mind. The real effect of Berlioz's "Carnaval Romain" Overture, to take a simple example, is to complement and intensify the mental picture which any well-read person—or better still, any one who has actually visited Rome—will have of this characteristic incident in Italian life. If the work be considered merely as abstract music, notwithstanding the stimulation ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... soon she found that he was an extremely able and agreeable man. It was he and no other who had painted the water-colours that adorned her room, and he could play and sing as well as he painted. Also, as Robert had told her, Mr. Meyer was very well-read in subjects that are not usually studied on the veld of South Africa; indeed, he had quite a library of books, most of them histories or philosophical and scientific works, of which he would lend her volumes. Fiction, however, ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard
... no one would quote if he could think; and it is not imagined that the well-read may quote from the delicacy of their taste, and the fulness of their knowledge. Whatever is felicitously expressed risks being worse expressed: it is a wretched taste to be gratified with mediocrity when the excellent lies before us. We quote to save proving what has been demonstrated, ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... No one will ever dispute these dates, as was the case with Chopin, for Old Fogy will be soon forgotten. It is due to the pious friendship of the publisher that these opinions are bound between covers. They are the record of a stubborn, prejudiced, well-trained musician and well-read man, one who was not devoid of irony. Indeed, I believe he wrote much with his tongue in his cheek. But he was a stimulating companion, boasted a perverse funny-bone and a profound sense of the importance of ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker
... refer to some event preserved in history,—may indeed be well known to well-read antiquaries, though so totally unknown to men whose general pursuits (like my own) have lain in other directions. The present, however, is an age for "popularising" knowledge; and your work has assumed that task as one of ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 47, Saturday, September 21, 1850 • Various
... education, her selective abilities had been indeed good. She had taken from her opportunities developmental elements and used them within herself wisely. She had fine conceptions of art, she was well-read; and because she had foreseen that she would be too rich to have any separate use for the things of art and learning, she had seized upon and welded all her inclinations and accomplishments into an harmonious, ...
— Sally of Missouri • R. E. Young
... top volume. Back home books as well bound as these would have carried a personal bookplate or at least the written name of the owner, but the fly leaf was bare. They had the look of well-read, cherished volumes but no ...
— Rebel Spurs • Andre Norton
... Why do I say "existence", and not "existences"? Why, with a fine handsome plural ready to hand, do I wind you up and turn you off, so to speak, with a piffling little singular not fit for a half-starved newspaper fellow, let alone a fine, full-fledged, intellectual and well-read vegetarian and teetotaller who writes in the reviews? Eh? Why do I say "existence"?—speaking of many, several and various persons as though they had but one mystic, combined and corporate personality such as Rousseau (a fig for the Genevese!) portrayed in his Contrat Social (which you have ...
— On Nothing & Kindred Subjects • Hilaire Belloc
... Hon. THOS. JENKINS who refused to take it, because his wife had a prejudice against Bulls ever since she was scared by one that chased her five miles for no other reason than that she was what might be called a red woman—well-read in the exciting house-wife literature of the ...
— Punchinello, Volume 2, No. 37, December 10, 1870 • Various
... up the opposite canyon to duly call upon this inventor-physician one day, and his delight upon finding a well-read, music-loving, philosophic, erratic man, who had at once recognized a kindred spirit, and who had made ...
— Sisters • Kathleen Norris
... most delightfully fertile in horrors. In one chapter he buried a nobleman alive in the family vault, and described his sensations in his coffin so poignantly that for weeks I was afraid to go to sleep lest I should dream about him. My father was an uncommonly well-read man; but he made no attempt to regulate my studies, except that now and then he would suggest to me that I was wasting time in the perusal of rubbish; and I do suppose that, as a boy, I read as much actually worthless stuff as anybody ever did within an equal ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... the success which naturally might have seemed assured to him, of dealing with these subjects in a large and dispassionate way. Scholar, thinker, student as he is, conversant with all literature, familiar with books and names which many well-read persons have never heard of, he has his bitter prejudices, like the rest of us, Protestants or Catholics; and what he hates is continually forcing itself into his mind. He tells, with great and pathetic force, the terrible story ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... the walls were many rare and weird trophies of the chase, not to mention the innumerable pictures that had been taken from "Godey's Lady Book" and other periodicals of that time. A little book-shelf, that had been fashioned out of a box, was filled with old and well-read books; while the mantel that guarded the fireplace was ornamented with various small articles, conspicuous among which were a clock that beat loud, automatic time with a brassy resonance, a china dog and cat of most gaudy colours, a whisky bottle and two tumblers, and some winter berries ...
— The Girl of the Golden West • David Belasco |
