"Grammarian" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of the world's great churches, and still stands for the admiration of men a millennium and a half after its completion, it is easy to understand that Anthemios' reputation is well founded. A second brother was Metrodoros, a distinguished grammarian and teacher, especially of the youthful nobility of Byzantium, as it was then called, or Constantinople, as we have come to call it. A third brother was a prominent jurist, also in Constantinople. The fourth ...
— Old-Time Makers of Medicine • James J. Walsh
... Mr. Browning's later poems it is sometimes alleged that their meaning is obscure because their grammar is bad. A cynic was once heard to observe with reference to that noble poem 'The Grammarian's Funeral,' that it was a pity the talented author had ever since allowed himself to remain under the delusion that he had not only buried the grammarian, but his grammar also. It is doubtless true that Mr. Browning has some provoking ways, and ...
— Obiter Dicta • Augustine Birrell
... renovated the worn-out exhausted soils. Swift defined a good style, as "proper words in proper places." Voltaire's impulse was of a higher flight, "proper thoughts on proper subjects." Swift's idea was that of a grammarian. Voltaire's feeling was that of a philosopher. We are only considering this universal writer in his literary character, which has fewer claims to the character of an inventor than several who never attained to ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... frequently to the scholiasts and editors in "The First Part" (which is so trivial that one wonders why he ever troubled to accumulate so much insignificant material), but after quoting them he does not hesitate to call their ideas "pedantial" (p. 24) and to refer to their statements as grammarian's "prattle" (p. 11). And, though at times it seems that his curiosity and industry impaired his judgment, Rapin does draw significant ideas from such scholars and critics as Quintilian, Vives, Scaliger, Donatus, Vossius, ...
— De Carmine Pastorali (1684) • Rene Rapin
... need not hate each other for the sake of our little systems, like the grammarian who damned his rival's soul for his 'theory of the irregular verbs.' Nothing, I hope, is said here inconsistent with the highest esteem for Mr. Max Muller's vast erudition, his enviable style, his unequalled ...
— Modern Mythology • Andrew Lang
... a cultivated English world—a thoughtful English-speaking world—to weigh the merits of English-speaking poets, Browning will be found among the first. Who has done anything finer in English than "A Grammarian's Funeral"? Or "My Last Duchess," or "A Toccata of Galuppi's" or some of the passages in "Pippa Passes"? Who has conceived a better fable for a poem than that of "Pippa"? And as for Keats, the world he discovered for us is of greater value to the faculties ...
— Confessions of a Book-Lover • Maurice Francis Egan
... come to years of discretion, Cato himself would teach him to read, although he had a servant, a very good grammarian, called Chilo, who taught many others; but he thought not fit, as he himself said, to have his son reprimanded by a slave, or pulled, it may be, by the ears when found tardy in his lesson: nor would he have him owe to a servant the obligation ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... course, is that of the Entrance Examination. Now a principal subject introduced into this examination will be "the elements of Latin and Greek Grammar." "Grammar" in the middle ages was often used as almost synonymous with "literature," and a Grammarian was a "Professor literarum." This is the sense of the word in which a youth of an inaccurate mind delights. He rejoices to profess all the classics, and to learn none of them. On the other hand, by "Grammar" is now more ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... for extremum; at which Johnson's critical ear instantly took offence, and discoursing vehemently on the unmetrical effect of such a lapse, he shewed himself as full as ever of the spirit of the grammarian. ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... fantastic archaeology Seneca, who had probably gone through it all, expresses a profound and very rational contempt. In a rather amusing passage[6] he contrasts the kind of use which would be made of a Virgil lesson by a philosopher and a grammarian. Coming to ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... are in like manner divers collegiat churches, as Windsor, Wincester, Eaton, Westminster (in which I was sometime an unprofitable Grammarian under the reverend father, master Nowell, now dean of Paules) and in those a great number of pore scholers, dailie maintained by the liberality of the founders, with meat, bookes, and apparell; from whence after they ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various
... same name, was a native of Alexandria, by profession a grammarian or schoolmaster; who, passing from Berytus to the Syrian Laodicea, married and settled there, and eventually rose to the presbyterate in the Church of that city. Apollinaris, the son, had been born there ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... this opportunity of making a grammatical observation with respect to the older poets, which, to the best of our knowledge, has not hitherto been noticed by any grammarian or critic. Wherever a wish or a prayer is expressed, either by the single optative mood of the verb, or with [Greek: me, eithe, ei gar, eithe gar], the verb is in the second aorist, if it have a distinct second aorist; otherwise it may be in the ...
— Prometheus Bound and Seven Against Thebes • Aeschylus
... Priscian.] There is no reason to believe, as the commentators observe that the grammarian of this name was stained with the vice imputed to him; and we must therefore suppose that Dante puts the individual for the species, and implies the frequency of the crime among those who abused the opportunities which the education ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... Linacre, who had studied at Florence under the refugee, Demetrius Chalcondylas, began teaching Greek, at Oxford, the former as early as 1491. A little later John Colet, Dean of St. Paul's and the founder of St. Paul's School, and his friend, William Lily, the grammarian and first master of St. Paul's (1500), also studied Greek abroad, Colet in Italy, and Lily at Rhodes and in the city of Rome. Thomas More, afterward the famous chancellor of Henry VIII., was among the pupils of Grocyn and Linacre at Oxford. Thither also, in 1497, came in search of the new ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... appointment of his successor, Roane would have been the man. His opinion in Hunter vs. Martin disclosed personal animus in every line and was written with a vehemence which was more likely to discomfit a grammarian than its designed victims; but it was withal a highly ingenious plea. At one point Roane enjoyed an advantage which would not be his today when so much more gets into print, for the testimony of Madison's Journal, which was not published till 1840, is ...
— John Marshall and the Constitution - A Chronicle of the Supreme Court, Volume 16 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Edward S. Corwin
... rest, cites Saevius Nicanor in the 1620 edition of The Anatomy of Melancholy (this passage was subsequently remodeled) in terms which have the unintended merit of conveying a very fair notion of the old Grammarian's literary ethics:— ...
— Taboo - A Legend Retold from the Dirghic of Saevius Nicanor, with - Prolegomena, Notes, and a Preliminary Memoir • James Branch Cabell
... escaped it in a condition that can hardly avoid it. Those petty acquisitions and reputed perfections, that advance and elevate the conceits of other men, add no feathers unto mine. I have seen a grammarian tower and plume himself over a single line in Horace, and show more pride, in the construction of one ode, than the author in the composure of the whole book. For my own part, besides the jargon and patois of several provinces, I understand no less than six languages; yet ...
— Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend • Sir Thomas Browne
... Ben Arfa, here called Naphta-Wah, was descended from a noble family in Khorasan. He applied himself to study with indefatigable perseverance, and was a very voluminous author in several branches of literature, but he is chiefly distinguished as a grammarian. He died in the year ...
— Oriental Literature - The Literature of Arabia • Anonymous
... 593 there existed in the capital a number of special establishments for the practice of Greek declamation. Several distinguished names already occur among these Roman teachers; the philosopher Panaetius has been already mentioned;(18) the esteemed grammarian Crates of Mallus in Cilicia, the contemporary and equal rival of Aristarchus, found about 585 at Rome an audience for the recitation and illustration, language, and matter of the Homeric poems. It is true that this ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... conclude then that the best of these simpler Plain-song tunes are very fit for congregational use. They should be offered as pure melody in free rhythm and sung in unison: their accompaniment must not be entrusted to a modern grammarian. It is well also to use most of them in their English form, the Old Sarum Use as it is called; which happily preserves to us a national tradition, in the opinion of some experts older and more correct than any known on the continent; and if the differences in our English ...
— A Practical Discourse on Some Principles of Hymn-Singing • Robert Bridges
... grammarian, to refrain from fault-finding, and not in a reproachful way to chide those who uttered any barbarous or solecistic or strange-sounding expression; but dexterously to introduce the very expression which ought ...
— Thoughts of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus • Marcus Aurelius Antoninus
... than ever, I could not help gazing at him with some pangs of recollection. I could not avoid recalling the time when his very name was to me a word of power, and when the thought of him roused on my cheek a red flush of enthusiasm. As I looked I murmured two lines from Browning's Grammarian's Funeral: ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... last night, except that I only examined a part of the different tables. I am much pleased with it. The author is ingenious, and writes from his own experience as a school-master, as well as the best authorities; and the time will come when no authority, as an English grammarian, will be superior to his own. It is the very thing I have so long wished for, being much dissatisfied with any spelling-book I had seen before. I now send you the book, and request you to let John take it to his master, with ...
— Noah Webster - American Men of Letters • Horace E. Scudder
... awful negation which overthrows the maleficent Jupiter, and with his fall inaugurates the golden age. The strange name of Demogorgon has probably its origin in the clerical error of some mediaeval copyist, fumbling with the scholia of an anonymous grammarian. One can conceive that it appealed to Shelley's wayward fancy because it suggested none of the traditional theologies; and certainly it has a mysterious and venerable sound. Shelley can describe It only as Godwin describes his principle ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford
... alike, and men and women much of a muchness, will deny that it was a generation of intrepid efforts forward.' Some fell in mid-combat: some survived to witness the eventual victory of their cause. For all might be claimed the funeral honours which Browning claimed for his Grammarian. They aimed high; they 'threw themselves on God': the mountain-tops are ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... work of the grammarian Musaeus was supposed to be the genuine production of the fabulous ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... of New York, the mother of Lindley Murray, the grammarian, by her ceremonious hospitality detained Lord Howe and his officers, while the British forces were in pursuit of General Putnam, and thus prevented the capture of the American army. In fine, not merely the lives of many individuals, but the safety of the whole patriot ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... made by Berkeley and Hume upon 'abstract ideas.' Rosmini,[174] in an elaborate criticism, complains that Stewart did not perceive the inevitable tendency of nominalism to materialism.[175] Stewart, in fact, accepts a good deal of Horne Tooke's doctrine,[176] though calling Tooke an 'ingenious grammarian, not a very profound philosopher,' but holds, as we shall see, that the materialistic tendency can be avoided. As becomes a nominalist, he attacks the syllogism upon grounds more fully brought out by J. S. Mill. Upon another essential point, he agrees with the pure empiricists. He accepts ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... lord of a castle who is a king can procure for his very obedient humble servants and guests. My own duties are to do nothing. I enjoy my leisure. I give an hour a day to the King of Prussia to touch up a bit his works in prose and verse; I am his grammarian, not his chamberlain. The rest of the day is my own, and the evening ends with a pleasant supper. . . . Never in any place in the world was there more freedom of speech touching the superstitions of men, and never were they treated with more banter and contempt. ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... however, among these fifty men and women one true and sublime poet,—the dying "Grammarian," who applies the alchemy of a lofty imagination to the dry ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... inscription at Mathura which records the building of a part of a sanctuary to the Lord Vasudeva about 15 B.C. by the great Satrap Sodasa,[27] we note that the grammarian Patanjali, who wrote his commentary the Mahabhashya upon Panini's grammar about 150 B.C., has something to say about Krishna Vasudeva, whom he recognises as a divine being (on IV. iii. 98). He quotes some verses referring ...
— Hindu Gods And Heroes - Studies in the History of the Religion of India • Lionel D. Barnett
... inspire or do harm. It does not show you this spread out in words, whilst you remember only the part which is before your eyes having already forgotten the past and not knowing the future, and which verses only the ears of a grammarian can understand with difficulty, but one's eyes visibly enjoy that spectacle as being true, and one's ears seem to hear the actual cries and clamour of the painted figures; it seems as if you smell the smoke, you fly from the flames, you fear the fall of the buildings; you are ...
— Michael Angelo Buonarroti • Charles Holroyd
... dressed like a Swiss, but the people of Switzerland, who were numerous and useful in Paris, remonstrated at a custom likely to bring them into contempt; and the grotesque giant was thereupon arrayed in a wig and a long coat, with a wooden dagger painted red in his hand. The grammarian Du Marsais once got into trouble on the occasion of this procession. He was walking in the street when one woman elbowed another in trying to get near the statue. "If you want to pray," said the ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... James Lee, whose soul is known to him, Pippa the silk-spinning girl, two men found in the morgue, persons lost, forgotten, or misunderstood. He searches the world till he finds the man whom everybody will concur in despising, the mediaeval grammarian, and he writes to him the most powerful ode in English, the mightiest tribute ever paid to a man. His culture and his learning are all subdued to what he works in; they are all in harness to draw his thought. He mines in antiquity or ...
— Emerson and Other Essays • John Jay Chapman
... of all needed a specialist; a succession of very able mathematicians sat in this chair. King's College had not the same good fortune. From its foundation it possessed a separate functionary, the Humanist or Grammarian; but he had also, till 1753, to act as Rector of the Grammar School. Edinburgh obtained from an early date a Mathematical chair, occupied by men of celebrity. There was no other innovation till near the end of the 17th century, when Greek was isolated both in ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain
... doing this, you would withdraw, and necessarily withdraw, your attention from the higher qualities of art, precisely as a grammarian, who is that, and nothing more, loses command of the matter and substance of thought. And the exquisitely mysterious mechanisms of the engraver's method have, in fact, thus entangled the intelligence of the careful draughtsmen of Europe; so that since the final perfection of this translator's ...
— Ariadne Florentina - Six Lectures on Wood and Metal Engraving • John Ruskin
... double forms of the Imperative, namely the one in r, and the one in e. It may, however, be remarked, that wherever the Imperative ends in e, the Preterite has the form in m; thus, pid-e dig, pid-ema dug. The only exception is the anomalous form peneingodgi dived. This prepares the future grammarian for a division of the Kowrarega ...
— Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John MacGillivray
... knowledge, a narrow but complete self-satisfaction, with such accompanying faults as pedantry, triviality, and the kind of partial blindness which belong to intellectual myopia. The specialist is idealized almost into sublimity in Browning's "Burial of the Grammarian." We never need fear that he will undervalue himself. To be the supreme authority on anything is a satisfaction to self-love next door to the precious delusions of dementia. I have never pictured a character more contented with himself than the ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... not less dainty and fine, full of the archaisms and curious felicities in which that generation delighted, quaint terms and images picked fresh from the early dramatists, the lifelike phrases of some lost poet preserved by an old grammarian, racy morsels of the vernacular and studied prettinesses:—all alike, mere playthings for the genuine power and natural eloquence of the erudite artist, unsuppressed by his erudition, which, however, made some people ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater |
