"Worldly-wise" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... bottom. It was all of a piece—everything was growing worse and worse. "Young matron," indeed!—where had his grandchild picked up that precious phrase? She was growing all too worldly-wise for his simple old mind. His abashed eyes turned away from her and began to blink at the twinkling candles on the tea-table; it stood there like an altar raised for the celebration of some strange, fearsome ritual—an incident in the dubious life ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... position she had won, and that he was more reluctant than glad to hear her praised. He seemed to prefer she should be unnoticed, save by himself, and more or less submissive to his will. Had she been worldly-wise, she would by every action have moved a silent protest against this, his particular form of sex-dominance, but she was of too loving a nature to dispute any right of command he chose to assume. Other men, younger and far higher ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... his affectionate and reverent feeling towards his patient, the peasant girl,—"the sick one, the poor one." But we like to see how, from the mouths of babes and sucklings, praise may be so perfected as to command this reverence from the learned and worldly-wise. ...
— Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 • S.M. Fuller
... modicum of selfishness, a dash of the worldly-wise, and his course would have been relieved of its curves, and he would have gravitated straight to the red hat. From this to being pope would have been but a step, for he was ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... cross itself was folly in the estimation of the early unbelieving world, so were such theological occupations, at a time when the Sovereign Pontiff had not an inch of ground whereon he could freely tread, a subject for jesting and sarcasm to the worldly-wise of the nineteenth century. It was some time before they came to understand that a Pope is a theologian more than a king, that, as such, he is sure of the future, and that the solemn proceeding in regard to the Immaculate Conception was a triumphant reply to all the errors of modern ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell
... terms had been offered to him at all; and this induced Alban almost to regret that he had made any such overtures, and to believe that Darrell's repugnance to open the door of conciliation a single inch to so sturdy a mendicant was more worldly-wise than Alban had originally supposed. Yet partly, even for Darrell's own security and peace, from that persuasion of his own powers of management which a consummate man of the world is apt to entertain, and partly from a strong curiosity to see the audacious ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... be repeated—have awakened some little vague mistrust in a man more worldly-wise than the Golden Dustman. On the other hand, the Secretary was discerning, discreet, and silent, though as zealous as if the affairs had been his own. He showed no love of patronage or the command of money, but distinctly preferred resigning both to Mr Boffin. If, in his limited sphere, he ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... painted lips. . . . Such are the jumbled pictures. They are bred of brain-fag, no doubt; yet, whatever be their lineage," said Charteris, happily, "they render glum discussion and platitudinous moralizing quite out of the question. So, let's pretend, Pauline, that we are not a bit more worldly-wise than those youngsters who are frisking yonder in the Gymnasium—for, upon my word, I dispute if we have ever done anything to suggest that we are. Don't let's be cowed a moment longer by those bits of paper with figures on them which our too-credulous fellow-idiots consider to ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... exceedingly that they were different, was never at ease with them, and in his heart of hearts bitterly hated them. After all that can be said by way of explanation, there was much in this concealed animosity of Mr. Broad which was unaccountable. It was concealed because he was far too worldly-wise to show it openly; but it was none the less intense. Indeed, it was so intense as to be almost inconsistent with Mr. Broad's cast of character, and his biographer is at a loss to find the precise point where it naturally ...
— The Revolution in Tanner's Lane • Mark Rutherford
... time," he said disgustedly, and hopped up once more. Then he stood still, looked up, shrugged his shoulders, and remarked in an absurdly worldly-wise tone, "Those grapes are sour!" After which he ...
— How to Tell Stories to Children - And Some Stories to Tell • Sara Cone Bryant
... Florio, from which we may derive any idea of his personal appearance and manner, suggest a very singular individuality. There was evidently something peculiar about his face; he was undoubtedly witty and worldly-wise, a braggart, a sycophant, and somewhat of a buffoon. He was imbued with an exaggerated idea of his own importance, and possessed of most unblushing assurance. In 1591 he signed his address "To the Reader," prefixed to his Second ...
— Shakespeare's Lost Years in London, 1586-1592 • Arthur Acheson
... opinion found vent one night at bedtime. Rosebud listened to the worldly-wise woman's remarks with a glow of ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum
... shout of laughter from the entire assembly was the reply to this proclamation, in which the worldly-wise Pollnitz joined heartily, while his young companion had not the courage to raise his ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... to the honor of her acquaintance, wondered to themselves at the cold monotony of her black and white engravings. The artlessness of this wonder struck shame to their hearts when they chanced to learn that the lady had repaid it with a worldly-wise amusement at their own highly-colored waterfalls and snow-capped mountain-peaks. Marietta could recall as piercingly as if it were yesterday, in how crestfallen a chagrin she and her mother had gazed at their parlor after this incident, their disillusioned eyes open for the first ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... in books would mount on a very high pinnacle of virtue and cast off Mr. Durnovo and all his works; but it is much more practical to make what use we can of him. That is a worldly-wise, nineteenth-century way of looking at it; ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... disguised to his old master, says, "Not so young as to love a woman for her singing, nor so old as to dote on her for anything; I have years on my back forty-eight"—a speech which contains one of the finest of Shakespeare's minor touches of worldly-wise character drawing. The German artist Retsch in his fine outline illustrations of this play has conceived this Fool with fine appreciation of Shakespeare's meaning. He makes him a mature man, with a wan ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... negotiated compact of diplomatic engagements and assurances designed to serve as groundwork to an eventual enterprise of that kind must therefore also be questionable in a high degree. It is even doubtful if any allowance of time can be counted on to bring these modern peoples to a more reasonable, more worldly-wise, frame of mind; so that they would come to see their interest in such an arrangement, or would divest themselves of their present stubborn and perhaps fantastic prejudice against an autocratic regime ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... more worldly-wise, he might have suspected that this vehemence had root in something beside filial love, but Billy was never one to question a gift from God. Whenever his simple soul, chastened by suffering and earnest endeavor, took courage, he always thanked heaven and returned ...
— Janet of the Dunes • Harriet T. Comstock
... "'Katherine,' a worldly-wise aunt of mine said to me once, 'you have two grave faults. One is telling the truth. The other is telling lies. I have never known you to fail in telling the one when it was a time to tell the other.' Can't you see what a curse it is to mix times ...
— The Visioning • Susan Glaspell
... degree the debt of gratitude which I never even acknowledged to Challoner. Eve"—he paused, and repeated the name with a certain sense of enjoyment—"Eve is not fully equipped with worldly wisdom. Thank God, for I hate a worldly-wise woman. She is hardly old enough or—plain enough to fight ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman
... It was not a worldly-wise change. Wages in England were very low and there were no vineyards in that chilly land, and Pierre worked and died a plain English farm-hand, blessed only with health, remarkable strength, and a wretched, but ...
— Our Nervous Friends - Illustrating the Mastery of Nervousness • Robert S. Carroll
... alienated or consumed; and by none more readily and assuredly than by those who are most eager for the praise of policy, of prudence, of sagacity, and of all those qualities which are the darling virtues of the worldly-wise. Moreover; the evidence to which I have made appeal, in order to establish the truth, is not locked up in cabinets; but is accessible to all; as it exists in the bosoms of men—in the appearances and intercourse of daily life—in the details ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... enterprise, and in political questions they take as keen an interest as any of the Indian races. With hesitation and with apologies to Parsee friends, we ask whether it is the numerous Parsees in Bombay who have made their fellow-westerns only worldly-wise. For to great commercial enterprise, the Parsees add ...
— New Ideas in India During the Nineteenth Century - A Study of Social, Political, and Religious Developments • John Morrison
... in toilettes that would bring out the full beauty of her marvelous figure. He, after the manner of the more intelligent and worldly-wise New York men, had some knowledge of women's clothes. His sister knew how to dress; Josephine knew how, though her taste was somewhat too sober to suit Norman—at least to suit him in Dorothy. He thought out and suggested dresses to Dorothy, and told her where to get them. Dorothy tried ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips
... much more expert and worldly-wise than either of us. We held our innocent excursion in abeyance and bowed with a certain embarrassed awe to Johnny's demonstration of his aptitude for taking the world as it was and to his light-handed, care-free way ...
— On the Stairs • Henry B. Fuller
... crime; never extirpate it, though they often deter specific persons from continuing a criminal career by either killing them outright, or destroying in them their effective spiritual manhood. Therefore the selfishly enlightened and worldly-wise shake their heads and declare that crime in criminals is ineradicable. If medicine for crime be futile, save as a temporary physical preventive, all that is left to us is to continue it as a preventive, while admitting its impotence as a cure. ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... That is my father's likeness. He was of English birth, the younger son of a rich Liverpool merchant. An impulsive, romantic, adventurous boy, seized early with a passion for seeing the world, his unimaginative, worldly-wise father, practical and severe, kept him within narrow, fretting bounds, and imposed harsh restraints upon him. When he was but sixteen years old, he ran away from home, shipped before the mast, and, after several long ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... and others depict individual clerics who are simple, straightforward, pious, and in every way worthy men, the friend of the young and the helper of the sorrowful. Sometimes they are not very learned, and not at all worldly-wise, but they show that the type is largely represented amongst the priesthood of Spain, and there are not wanting some of distinctly liberal tendencies. There was a remarkable article in a Madrid paper of radical, if not socialistic, tendencies, the other day, by one who signed himself "A priest of ...
— Spanish Life in Town and Country • L. Higgin and Eugene E. Street
... office of tax-receiver for Sancerres, which office he still held about 1836. With the Abbe Duret and others he frequented the home of Mme. Dinah de la Baudraye. He was little, fat and common. His court made little way with the baroness, despite his talent and his worldly-wise ways of a bachelor. He sang ballads, told stories, and displayed pseudo-rare autographs. [The ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... is a vast romance, beautiful and terrible, like a tragedy of AEschylus. You stand amidst it entranced, like a child by the beauty and awe of a tempest. And all the while the worldly-wise, to whom the tempest is only a matter of the machineries of a theatre—of painted clouds, electric lights, and sheets of copper—the world-wise govern the storm as they choose and leave you in it defenceless and lonely as old ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... delighted to honour, or rather to distinguish by honours. The Marquess Federigo Gonzaga of Mantua, the Duke Guidobaldo II. of Urbino, among many others, showed themselves ready to propitiate him; and such a man as Titian the worldly-wise, the lover of splendid living to whom ample means and the fruitful favour of the great were a necessity; who was grasping yet not avaricious, who loved wealth chiefly because it secured material consideration and a life of serene enjoyment; such a man could not be expected to rise superior to the ...
— The Later works of Titian • Claude Phillips
... the big clock neared the point of eight a furtive smile appeared on more than one face; and when the hour rang out a sigh of satisfaction swept through the room, to which the little old lawyer responded with a worldly-wise grunt as he moved from his place and proceeded to ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green |
